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EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 

THE CHUECHMAN. 
"We think Mr. Moon entitled to the gratitude of all lovers of 
our language in its purity for this exposure of the Dean's English." 

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 

" Demonstrating that while the Dean undertook to instruct 
others, he was, himself, but a castaway in matters of grammar." 

THE RECORD, 
11 Coming out for wool, in fact, the Dean went back shorn ; 
rushing forth to teach, he went home taught. We can cordially 
recommend Mr. Moon's volume ; it is really an able critique." 
THE NEW YORK ROUND TABLE. 
"The Dean's book occasioned a great deal of comment in 
England when it was first published, but nothing that will compare 
with Mr. Moon's little book, which contains some of the best speci- 
mens of verbal criticism that we have ever seen." 

THE MORNING ADVERTISER. 
" It is one of the smartest pieces of prose-criticism we have 
chanced to meet with for many a day." 

THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE. 

" It is one of the smartest pieces of criticism we ever read. It 
is not only admirable as a specimen of critical style, but it abounds 
in suggestions which no man in his senses can undervalue : more 
than this, it is a delightful example of good writing." 



11 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 

THE CHRISTIAN NEWS. 
"Mr. Moon's letters are models of English composition, and 
are so full of animation, so sharp, lively, and trenchant, that it is 
quite a treat to read them. He has, with a precision and an 
elegance which are unsurpassed in any writings, rendered a dry 
and forbidding subject both pleasing and profitable. His formidable 
indictment of the Dean is supported with an ability and an acuteness 
we have seldom seen excelled." 

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW. 
" Mr. Moon well performs his self-imposed task : he evinces a 
fine sense of discernment in the niceties of language ; and while 
severely criticising the sentences of his opponent, shows that he, 
himself, knows how to write in a remarkably clear, terse, and 
vigorous style." 

THE LONDON QUAETEBLY EEVIEW. 
"Mr. Moon knows the secrets of both the strength and the 
grace of his own tongue." 

THE WESTMINSTER EEVIEW. 
" The Dean has laid himself open to criticism as much for bad 
taste as for questionable syntax. His style of writing is awkward 
and slovenly, that of his antagonist remarkably terse and clear, and 
bearing witness to a sensitiveness of ear and taste which are 
glaringly deficient in his opponent." 

THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. 
" We advise all our readers to see Mr. Moon's reply. Written 
in pure, forcible, elegant, and classic English — perfect in composi- 
tion and punctuation ; and, in its gentlemanly dignity, so opposed 
to the slip-shod, half -vulgar easiness of the Dean's 'Plea' — it 
merits the attention of all students of our tongue." 

THE DUBLIN EEVIEW. 
" Even practised writers may here learn a lesson or two in the art 
of expressing themselves in their mother tongue clearly and cor- 
rectly." 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. Ill 

THE LONDON REVIEW. 

" It is calculated to render considerable service to loose thinkers, 
speakers, and writers." 

THE RECORD. 

"The argument is conducted with admirable temper, and no 
reader can finish the volume without learning many valuable lessons 
in English composition, and some other things well worth knowing." 

THE COURT CIRCULAR. 

" All who are interested in such critical discussions as are so 
clearly and accurately carried on in this little book will be grateful 
to Mr. Moon not only for much solid instruction, but for much 
entertainment also." 

THE NONCONFORMIST. 

" We thank Mr. Moon very cordially for what he has done, and 
have no hesitation in saying that he has so far succeeded in his 
vindication of pure and correct English, as opposed to that which 
is lax and slip-shod, as to deserve the gratitude of those who, like 
ourselves, deem our mother-tongue, in all its restraints as well as 
in all its liberties, to be one of the most precious inheritances of 
Englishmen." 

THE SUNDAY TIMES. 

" Mr. Moon has rendered a real service to literature by his 
exposure of Dean Alford, and we are glad to express our recog- 
nition of the value of his labours." 

THE NEWSMAN. 
" It is a very valuable contribution to English philology, and one 
of the most masterly pieces of literary criticism in the language." 

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW. 
" With the air of a combatant who is confident of success, Mr. 
Moon plays with his antagonist before seriously commencing the 
fray ; he then points out the Dean's errors one by one ; strips him 
of his grammatical delusions ; and leaves him at last in a forlorn 
state of literary nudity." 



IV EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 

THE PHONETIC JOURNAL. 

"To those who are interested in speaking and writing good 
English, — and what educated person is not ? — this book is full of 
instruction ; and to those who enjoy a controversy, conducted with 
consummate skill and in excellent taste by a strong man, well 
armed, it is such a treat as does not fall in one's way often during 
a life- time." 

THE PUBLISHERS' CIRCULAR. 

" For ourselves, we have carefully scanned the present paragraph, 
but we confess to sending it to the printer's with some mis- 
givings. If it should meet the eye of Mr. Moon, we can only trust 
that no latent vice of style nor any faulty piece of syntax may be 
found to destroy the force of our hearty acknowledgments of his 
talents as a writer, and of his skill in literary controversy." 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 



" All that concerns the culture of language is of infinite 
" importance." 

" The language is common property ; and one of the most 
" laudable objects an educated man can pursue is to defend it 
" from contamination." 

" The care bestowed upon language is bestowed on the most 
"perfect instrument of the mind, without which all other 
" gifts are valueless." 

The Edinburgh Review, vol. cix, p. 366—9. 



" It is very idle to assail such an art as that of criticism, as 
" being nothing beyond an unkindly love of fault-finding. It 
" has its origin in a love of truth, and its real aim is to discover 
" and foster excellence, though, as a means to this end, it may 
" be sometimes necessary to expose pretence and incompetence." 
The North British Review, vol. lxxxiii, p. 163. 



THE 



DEAN'S ENGLISH: 

ON THE 

QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 






G, WASHINGTON MOON, 

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE. 



3ntb (&bitx oxt. 



LONDON: 

HATCHARD AND CO., 187 PICCADILLY. 

NEW YORK: POTT AND AMEEY, 

5 COOPER UNION, FOURTH AVENUE. 

1868. 






" Literature, if it is to flourish, must have a standard of 
6i taste built up, which shall expand to meet new forms of 
" excellence, but which shall preserve that which is excellent 
" in old forms, and shall serve as a guide to the rejection 
" of whatever is bad, pretentious, and artificial ; and it is 
" the business of critics to see that this standard is built up 
" and maintained." — The Saturday Review. 



By Transfer 



PEEFACE. 

i 

The purity of the English language is as dear to 
educated Americans as it is to ourselves. One of 
them (A. J. C.) thus writes in a recent number 
of the New York ' Bound Table ' : — 

" The corrupter of a language stabs straight at the 
4i heart of his country. He commits a crime against 
" every individual of the nation, for he throws a poison 
" into a stream from which all must drink. He wrongs 
"himself first, and afterward every man and woman 
" whose native speech he mars. It is the duty of every 
" educated man to guard ( zealously the purity of his 
" native tongue. No inheritance which can descend to an 
" individual or to a nation is comparable in value with a 
"language which possesses words into which may be 
" coined all great thoughts, pure motives* noble enter- 
prises, grand endeavors, the wealth of philosophy, 
" poetry, and history, and even the beauty of the canvas 
" and the glory of the marble. He who does aught to 



I 



x PREFACE. 

" preserve such a language deserves the gratitude of his 
" people, as he who mars an organism so beautiful and 
"precious, merits their severest displeasure. He who 
" hunts down and pillories a slang phrase, a vulgarism, a 
" corruption of any kind, is a public benefactor. In the 
" fulfilment of the sacred trust which rests on him as an 
" educated man, he adds a stone to the bulwark of his 
" nation's safety and greatness." 

My contribution towards that bulwark is this 
little work, which urges upon every Englishman 
the study of his own language, and points out to 
him the disgrace he may incur by neglecting it. 
Incidentally the book cautions him against self- 
deception in this matter. It tells him of one who 
had received a collegiate education, had attained 
academical honours, was raised to the deanery of 
Canterbury, and who considered himself to be 
such a thorough master of the language, that he 
actually assumed the office of public lecturer on 
the Queen's English ; and yet was so ignorant of 
its simplest rules, that the grossness of his errors 
in grammar and in composition, even in his lectures, 



PREFACE. xi 

made him the laughing-stock of those whom he 
thought himself competent to instruct. 

But I wish it to be distinctly understood that 
in writing these criticisms I have not been actuated 
by any feeling of ill-will towards the Dean of 
Canterbury. I object not to the man, but to the 
man's language ; it is extremely faulty ; and 
since the faults of teachers, if suffered to pass 
unreproved, soon become the teachers of faults, 
it was necessary that some one should take upon 
himself the task of " demonstrating ", as ' The 
' Edinburgh Eeview ' said, " that while the Dean 
" undertook to instruct others, he ivas himself hut a 
" castaway in matters of grammar ". As a Fellow 
of the Royal Society of Literature, one of the 
objects of which is "to preserve the purity of 
" the English language ", I took upon myself the 
demonstration. How far I have succeeded, each 
individual reader will determine for himself; but 
the yearly increasing sale of ' The Dean's English ' 
bears very flattering testimony to the fact that 



xii PREFACE. 

the work meets with the approval of the public 
generally. The best evidence, however, of its 
popularity is to be found in the circumstance that 
the Dean's own publishers have been tempted to 
reprint the book in America. What the Dean 
will say to this, I cannot imagine; but, for myself, 
while I fully appreciate the compliment which 
Messrs. Strahan & Co. thus pay me, I protest 
against their right to pirate a work of one of their 
own countrymen. Indeed, I protest against piracy 
under any circumstances. Piracy is robbery ; and 
robbery is an injustice committed by those who 
are more influenced by sordid gain than by honour. 
I hold such men in utter detestation. They tell 
us that literary piracy is legal where there is no 
international copyright. I blush for publishers who 
can accept such a refuge from the world's scorn as 
that. "Legal" ! This is the old tale. A child 
first commits a theft, and then tells a lie to con- 
ceal it. Piracy is not legal. I challenge any man, 
either in England or in America, to produce from any 



PREFACE xiii 

statute book of either nation, an act which declares 
literary piracy to be legal. The truth is, that 
unprincipled publishers, taking advantage of the 
absence of any law on the subject, earn a dishonest 
living by stealing the labour of other men's brains. 

For the information of my Transatlantic readers 
I mention that the American reprint of this work 
is from an early issue of it, and contains only a 
portion of the matter published in the subsequent 
editions. 

As for the Dean's book, it certainly contains 
much valuable information, collected from various 
sources; but it is blended with so very much 
that would be really injurious to the student of 
literature, that the work can never safely be 
recommended for his guidance. The style, too, 
in which it is written, is so hopelessly bad, that 
no amount of alteration could obtain for it the 
praise of being a model for chasteness and 
elegance of expression. We read in it, of persons 
making " a precious mess " of their work ! and 



xiv PREFACE. 

expletives, we are informed, serve to " grease the 
"wheels of talk " ! Some improvements, it is true, 
have been made in the second edition ; a man is 
no longer spoken of by the slang phrase "an 
" individual " ; but the Dean is so strangely for- 
getful of the courtesy due to women, that he uses, 
respecting them, the most debasing of all slang 
phrases. When speaking of even our Sovereign 
Lady the Queen, he describes her by an epithet 
which is equally applicable to a dog ! Her 
Majesty is a — "female"! We speak of " dog- 
" Latin " ; what more appropriate name than 
" dog-English " could be given to ungentlemanly 
language like this ? and how could we better 
serve the interests of literature than by hooting 
all such " dog-English " out of society ? " The 
" power of sneering ", says Professor Masson, u was 
" given to man to be used ; and nothing is more 
" gratifying than to see an idea which is proving 
" a nuisance, sent clattering away with a hue and 
" cry after it, and a tin kettle tied to its tail." 



PREFACE. xv 

The Dean has just published an appendix to 
his ' Queens English \ It was said that, if he 
should ever write again upon language, he would, 
doubtless, w r rite with greater care. The reviewers 
were very charitable to attribute his errors to 
carelessness ; but, that those errors sprang from 
another source, is now evident beyond dispute : — 
the appendix, although written after four years' 
more study, abounds with errors as gross as any 
that were found in the Dean's first essay. What 
does the reader think of there being, in a treatise 
on the Queen's English, such an error in grammar 
as the following: — "'Abnormal 9 is one of those 
"words which has come in to supply a want in 
" the precise statements of science " : — those words 
which has come ! As for the courtesies of litera- 
ture, the Dean calls those persons who differ w T ith 
him in the use of certain words, " apes " " asses ", 
and " idiots ". Is this " sound speech, that cannot 
" be condemned 99 : Titus ii, 8 ? Is this being 
"gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in 



xvi PREFACE. 

<l meekness instructing those that oppose them- 
" selves " : 2 Timothy ii, 24 ? But I forbear. 

Surely, surely, it will be only modest of the 
Dean to retire from the office of lecturer on the 
Queen's English ; and, if his good sense has not 
utterly left him, he will wisely reflect on the folly 
of attracting attention to a style of writing 
" which ", as Junius said of the character of Sir 
William Draper, "will only pass without censure 
" when it passes without observation? 

London, 

January, 1867. 



■ 



CONTENTS, 



ADJECTIVES. 

PAGE 

" A decided weak point ", or " A decidedly weak point " 48 
"Not a strict neuter- substantive,' ' or "Not strictly a 

neuter- subs t ant ive ,J . . .50, 123 

"Speak no coarser than usual", or "Speak not more 

coarsely than usual" . . • . 49,83 

"The words nearest connected", or "The words most 

nearly connected" . . . .49 

The rule respecting "first and last" and "former and 

latter" . . . . .152 

"Less" and "lesser" . . . .176 

ADVEEBS. 

Dr. Blair on adverbs . . . .14 

" Hath the Lord only spoken by Moses ? " or "Hath the 

Lord spoken only by Moses?" . . 73, 87, 127 

"His own use so frequently of it", or "His own so 

frequent use of it " . . . .87 

" How nicely she looks ", or " How nice she looks " . 86 

"It appears still more plainly", or "It appears still 

more plain" , . . .86 

" I only bring forward some things ", or " I bring for- 
ward some things only " . . 14, 118 

"They may be correctly classified", or "They may 

correctly be classified " . . 101,128 

"We merely speak of numbers", or "We speak of 

numbers merely " . . .14 

" Eather familiar " .... 161 



xviii CONTENTS. 

AMBIGUITY. 

PAGE 

Dr. Campbell on constructive ambiguity . .21 

Lord Karnes on constructive ambiguity . . 10 

A backwood planted with thoughts . . 55 

A man losing his mother in the papers . 13, 118 

A paragraph of fewer than ten lines, yet so ambiguously 

worded that it admits of 10.240 different readings 30,61, 125 
A strange sentence from Dean Swift's writings . 16 

A witness " intoxicated by the motion of an honourable 

member " . . . .17 

" Compositors without any mercy " . . , 12 

" Compositors without the slightest compunction " 11, 117 
Defiling a detachment of soldiers . . . J9 

Disappointed ambition . . . .19 

Expressing a sentence, or expressing the meaning . 58 

Expressing a woman . . . .58 

Human kidneys in dogs . . . .31 

Intellectual qualities of raiment . . .32 

Incongruous association of ideas . . .60 

" I will introduce the body of — my essay " . 12, 117 

Literary Frenchmen . . . 17, 119 

Obscure writing . . . . .96 

Professors walking off with dictionaries . 56, 125 

Solemn characters .... 161 

" Sometimes the editors fall, from their ignorance " . 9 
" The beaux painted their faces, as well as the women " 17 
" The Greeks wheeled about and halted, with the river 

on their hacks " . . . .19 

"The one rule of all others" . . 49,122 



CONJUNCTIONS. 

Does "than" govern the accusative case ? 47, 85, 149, 155, 172 

" As well as ", and " So well as " . .92 

" This [as well as that] fix it " . . 104, 129 

" Try and think ", or " try to think " . .156 






CONTENTS. xix 

ELLIPSIS. 

PAGE 

Brevity should be subordinate to perspicuity . . 99 

Unallowable ellipsis . . . .25 

" We call a cup-board a cubbard, and so of many other 

compound words " . . 53, 124 

EMPHASIS. 

The use of emphasis . . . .24 

The misuse of emphasis — " And they did eat " . 25 

" Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him " . .80 

FINE LANGUAGE. 

" Call a spade a spade " .... 136 

"Chrononhotonthologos" . . . 136 
A man is "an individual 1 ', or "a person", or u a 

party " 138, 142 

A woman is u a female", or " a lady", or "a young 

person" ..... 139 

A bull is " a gentleman coiv" . . . 139 

A bitch is " a lady dog " . . . 139 
Boys and girls are " young gentlemen", " young ladies ", 

" juveniles " or " juvenile members of society " . 140 

To live in a house is " to reside in a residence " . 140 

An inn is " an hotel " , . . . 140 

A room is " an apartment " . . . 140 

Lords and nobles are " the aristocracy " . . 140 
The people of England are " the million", or " the 

masses " . . . . 141 

To take a walk is " to promenade " . . 141 

Landowners are "proprietors " . . . 141 

Farmers and yeomen are " agriculturists " . . 141 

A working man is " an operative " . . . 141 
A place is " a locality " . . . .141 

A celebrated person is " a celebrity " . . 141 

A maid- of- all- work speaks of her " situation" . 141 
A house-agent speaks of his " clients " . .141 



CONTENTS. 



A schoolmaster is a " Principal of a Collegiate Insti- 
tution" .... 
To be buried is " to be interred *' 
A churchyard is " a cemetery " or " a necropolis" 
To ask is "to inquire" 
To speak of is " to allude to" 



PAGB 
141 

141 
141 
143 
143 



NOUNS. 

Relatives without any nouns to which they refer 31, 121 

Singular or plural . . . .52 

OBSCURITY. [See Ambiguity]. 

PERSPICUITY. 

What is perspicuity ? . . . .22 

The most essential quality in all writings . . 23 

[See also Ambiguity]. 



PREPOSITIONS. 

" Different to ", or " Different from " . .48 
Errors in the use of the preposition "from" . 10, 91 
"In respect of", or " With respect to" . .58 
Not " five outs and one in", but five ins and one out . 107 
" The cat jumped on [to] the chair" . 38, 176 
"Treating an exception" or "Treating of an excep- 
tion" . . . . 58,99 

PRONOUNS. 

Dr. Campbell on pronouns . . . .29 

A difficulty of him . . . .56 

A paragraph with twenty-eight nouns intervening be- 
tween the pronoun and its noun . . 32, 61, 122 
"As tall as him", "As tall as me" . . . 151 
"It is I", or "It is me" . . 48,146,162,173 
"Itisher" .... 147,174 
Misuse of pronouns . . . .29 
" More than I ", or " More than me " . 85, 143 



: 



CONTENTS. xxi 

PAGE 

M Our Father which [or who] art in Heaven " . . 178 

" Than who ", or " Than whom" . . 150, 156 

" Than he" . . . . .156 

The management of pronouns is the test of a scholar's 

mastery over the language . . .28 

The possessive pronoun "its" occurs only once in the 

Bible . . . - 33,122 

The date of the introduction of " its " into the Bible 70, 126 
The origin of "its" . . . .169 

"The nations not so blest as thee" . . . 151 

The relation between nouns and pronouns, the great 

stumbling-block to most writers . 
"This" and "that" 
" Thou " and " thee ", when used 
William Cobbett on "it" . 
"Which I do" . 
Tom and Jack 
" He'd a stick and he'd a stick" 

PKONUNCIATION. 

The pronunciation of Greek proper names 
Should the "h" in " humble" be aspirated ? 
American pronunciation of the aspirate "h" 
" Manifold " and " Manifest " 

PUNCTUATION. 

An error in the sense occasioned by the insertion of a 

comma ..... 100 

An error in the sense occasioned by the misplacing of a 

comma ..... 103 

An error in the sense occasioned by the omission of a 

comma . . . . 11, 20 97, 117 

Lord Karnes on punctuation . . .10 

SENTENCES. 

Dr. Blair on the construction of sentences . . 16 

Dr. Campbell on the construction of sentences 15, 21 







158 


ft 


,64, 


117 
32 
157 
163 
164 


27, 


66, 


121 


27,: 


153, 


178 

48 

178 



xxu 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Lord Karnes on the construction of sentences 10, 15 

Other authorities on the construction of sentences . 16 

Examples of the violations of the law respecting the 

position of words in a sentence 17, 18, 19, 119, 120, 125, 162 

Objectionable construction of sentences . . 59 

" Squinting construction " . . . 20,100 

The natural order of constructing a sentence . .59 



SLANG. 



" A juvenile " 


. 140 


"A female" 


. 102, 128, 139 


" An individual " . 


. 59, 125, 138 


" A party" 


142, 159 


" A tipple " 


. 159 


"A trap" 


. 159 


"Come to grief " 


. 25. 120, 159 


SPELLING. 




" Honor " or " Honour " 


39, 81, 174 


"Odor", or "Odour" 


. 82 


" Tenor ", or " Tenour " 


. 42 


" Reliable ", or " Rely-upon-able " 


. 174 



TAUTOLOGY AND TAUTOPHANY. 

"Abated the nuisance by enacting that the debatable 

syllable", &c. . . . 106,129 

" Account for specimens, for which the author must not 

be accounted responsible " . . . 106 
" A counter-roll or check on the accounts. From this 

account of the word it appears", &c. . . 106 

Five ins and one out .... 107 

Three ins following each other, — " in in in " . . 24 

Other, other, others .... 106 



VEEBS. 

" He ate no dinner " 

"I ain't certain", "I ain't going" 



165 
S8 





PAGE 


. 


54 


. 


164 


. 


56 


51 


,123 


, , 


151 


. 


57 



CONTENTS, 



" I need not have troubled myself " . 

" Stick no bills " . 

" The next point which I notice shall be", &c. 

" There are three first and [there are] one last ' 

The verb "to leave " 

The verb "to progress " 

"To the former belong three, to the latter [belong] 

one" . . . . 51, 123 

" Twice one is two ", or " twice one are two " . .52 

"Would have been broken to pieces or [would have 

been] come to grief » . . 25, 60, 120, 159 



MISCELLANEOUS. 

The power of example . . . .3 

Dr. Campbell on the formation of languages . . 3 

The office of the grammarian and of the critic . 4 

The influence of popular writers . . .6 

Throwing stones . , . . .7 

Persuasive teaching . . . .7 

" The Times " . . 7, 8, 9, 103, 104 

" Mending their ways ", " highways", " by-roads ", and 

" private roads" . . . 11,117 

Great things which hang up framed at railway stations 18, 119 
" Individuals in social intercourse " . . 18, 120 

The source of mistakes . . .26, 121 

"Odious" and " odorous" . . . .28 

The language of the Bible . . .28, 89, 180 

" Be courteous " . . . . 34,76 

" We do not write for idiots " . . .36 

"A most abnormal elongation of the auricular appen- 
dages" . . . . 37,74 
Call a spade, a spade . . .37, 136 
Falling up into a depth . . . .36 
"No case, abuse the plaintiff" . . .37 
"Open up" . . . . .45 
A language that grew up by being brought down . 46 



XXIV 



CONTENTS. 



Neglect of the study of English at our public schools 

" An individual occurring in Shakspeare " 

A fact " stated into prominence" 

A bottomless swamp " filled in " 

Eating and being " filled up " 

Dean's English 

A literary curiosity 

The play of Hamlet with the Ghost left out 

Misquotation of an opponent's words 

Misrepresentations 

" Seeing " is not always " believing " 

Strange errors in an old edition of the Scriptures 

Misquotation of Scripture . . .73, 

" Why do you call me an ass ? " 

A letter to the Editor of ' The Patriot * 

Explanation respecting the charge of discourtesy 

Withdrawal of the charge of discourtesy 

A teacher is always amenable to criticism 

What is a nucleus ? 

" No more " and " never again " 

"Eight to a £" . 

The importance of trifles 

A groundless fear 

John Milton on rules and maxims 

An anecdote of Douglas Jerrold 

Educated persons 

"The final 'u* in tenour" and "the final 's' 

months" 
Variety not always charming 
No special training in English at our colleges 
The English language compared to a temple 
The prospects of the English language 
Precept v. practice 
" Punch the barber " 
Parallelisms • , 

The injurious effects of Dean Alford' s essays 
Dr. Alford' s abuse of the Americans 





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THE DEAN'S ENGLISH: 

A CEITICISM. 



To the Very Eev. Henry Alford, d.d., Dean of 
Canterbury. 

Eev. Sir, 

On the publication of your 'Plea for the Queens 
€ English ' * I was surprised to observe inaccuracies 
in the structure of your sentences, and also more than 
one grammatical error. Under ordinary circum- 
stances I should not have taken notice of such 
deviations from what is strictly correct in composi- 
tion; but the subject of your essay being the 
Queen's English, my attention was naturally drawn 
to the language you had employed ; and as, when 
I privately wrote to you respecting it, you justified 

* ' A Plea for the Queen's English ', by the Dean of Canter- 
bury : < Good Words', March, 1863. 

B 



2 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 

your use of tlie expressions to which I had referred, 
I am desirous of knowing whether such expressions 
are really allowable in writings, and especially 
whether they are allowable in an essay which has 
for its object the exposure and correction of literary 
inaccuracies. I therefore publish this my second 
letter to you ; and I do so, to draw forth criticism 
upon the rules involved in this question ; that, the 
light of various opinions being made to converge 
upon these rules, their value or their worthlessness 
may thereby be manifested. I make no apology 
for this course; for when, by your violations of 
syntax and your defence of those violations, you 
teach that Campbell's l Philosophy of Rhetoric, 
Karnes's 'Elements of Criticism \ and Blair's 
'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres' are no 
longer to be our guides in the study of the English 
language, no apology is needed from me for my 
asking the public whether they confirm the opinion 
that these hitherto acknowledged authorities should 
be superseded. 

To spread this inquiry widely is the more ne- 
cessary, because, on account of the position which 
you hold, and the literary reputation which you 
enjoy, your modes of expression, if suffered to 
pass unchallenged, will, probably, by and by be 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 3 

quoted in justification of the style of other writers 
who shall presume to damage by example, if not 
by precept, the highway of thought over which all 
desire to travel. 

By influential example it is that languages are 
moulded into whatever form they take ; therefore, 
according as example is for good or for evil, so will 
a language gain in strength, sweetness, precision, 
and elegance, or will become weak, harsh, un- 
meaning, and barbarous. Popular writers may 
make or may mar a language. It is with them, 
and not with grammarians, that the responsibility 
rests ; for language is what custom makes it ; and 
custom is, has been, and always will be, more 
influenced by example than by precept. 

Dr. Campbell, speaking of the formation of 
languages, justly says : — * " Language is purely a 
" species of fashion, in which, by the general, but 
" tacit, consent of the people of a particular state 
" or country, certain sounds come to be appropriated 
" to certain things as their signs, and certain ways 
" of inflecting and of combining those sounds come 
" to be established as denoting the relations which 
" subsist among the things signified. It is not the 
" business of grammar, as some critics seem pre- 
* Campbell's 'Philosop h y of Rhetoric', vol. i, book 2, chap. 1, 2. 

B '1 



4 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" posterously to imagine, to give law to the fashions 
a which regulate our speech. On the contrary, 
" from its conformity to these, and from that alone, 
" it derives all its authority and value. For, what 
" is the grammar of any language ? It is no other 
" than a collection of general observations metho- 
" dically digested, and comprising all the modes 
" previously and independently established, by 
" which the significations, derivations, and combi- 
" nations of words in that language are ascertained. 
" It is of no consequence here to what causes origi- 
" nally these modes or fashions owe their existence 
" — to imitation, to reflection, to affectation, or to 
" caprice ; they no sooner are accepted and become 
" general than they are the law^s of the language, 
" and the grammarian's only business is to note, 
" collect, and methodise them." " ' But/ it may be 
" said, ' if custom, which is so capricious and 
" ' unaccountable, is everything in language, of 
" ( what significance is either the grammarian or the 
" ' critic ? ' Of considerable significance notwith- 
" standing ; and of most then, when they confine 
" themselves to their legal departments, and do not 
" usurp an authority that does not belong to them. 
" The man who, in a country like ours, should 
u compile a succinct, perspicuous, and faithful digest 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 5 

" of the laws, though no lawgiver, would be univer- 
(t sally acknowledged to be a public benefactor. 
" How easy would that important branch of 
"knowledge be rendered by such a work, in 
" comparison with what it must be when we have 
" nothing to have recourse to but a labyrinth of 
" statutes, reports, and opinions. That man also 
" would be of considerable use, though not in the 
" same degree, who should vigilantly attend to every 
" illegal practice that were beginning to prevail, and 
" should evince its danger by exposing its contra- 
riety to law. Of similar benefit, though in a 
" different sphere, are grammar and criticism. In 
" language, the grammarian is properly the compiler 
" of the digest ; and the verbal critic, is the man who 
" seasonably notifies the abuses that are creeping 
" in. Both tend to facilitate the study of the 
" tongue to strangers, to render natives more perfect 
" in the knowledge of it, to advance general use 
" into universal, and to give a greater stability at 
" least, if not a permanency, to custom, that most 
" mutable thing in nature." 

I have quoted these passages because they have 
direct reference to the subject under consideration ; 
for I do not find fault with the critical remarks in 
your essay. Many of them, it is true, are not new ; 



6 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

but most of them are good, and therefore will bear 
re^perusal ; } T et it was scarcely necessary to repeat 
in the March number of 'Good Words', the meaning 
of " avocation ", which Archbishop Whately had 
given in the same magazine in the previous August; 
and so far from its being " so well known a fact " 
that we reserve the singular pronouns "thou " and 
"thee" "entirely for our addresses in prayer to 
11 Him who is the highest Personality ", it is not a 
fact. These pronouns are very extensively and 
very properly used in poetry, even when inanimate 
objects are addressed ; as is the case in the 
following lines from Coleridge's ' Address to Mont 
' Blanc' : — 

" dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee 
" Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 
" Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer 
" I worshipped the Invisible alone." 

However, I shall not notice your critical remarks, 
for they are of only secondary importance. Very 
little can be added to the canons of criticism 
already laid down ; very much may be done for the 
permanent enriching of our language, by popular 
writers' exercising more care as to the examples 
they set in composition, than as to the lessons they 
teach concerning it. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 7 

But, in literature especially, it has always been 
so much easier for authors to censure than to guide 
by example, and it has been thought by them so 
much better fun to break another author's windows 
than to stay quietly at home taking care of their 
own, that the throwing of stones has long been a 
favourite amusement. Nor do we object to it, 
providing two things be granted : first, that the 
glass of the windows is so bad that the objects 
seen through it appear distorted ; and, secondly, 
that in no spirit of unkindness shall the stones be 
thrown, lest you not only break the authors 
windows, but also wound the author himself. 

It must be admitted that there is in your essay 
so little of the " sweetness of the lips " which 
" increaseth learning " that but a very small 
amount of good can result to those whom you 
think to be most in need of improvement. You 
speak of u the vitiated and pretentious style which 
"passes current in our newspapers' 9 . You sneeringly 
say, " In a leading article of ' The Times' not long 
"since, teas this beautiful piece of slipshod English:" 
then follows the quotation, with this remark ap- 
pended, "Here we see faults enough besides the 
" wretched violations of grammar"; and, " these writers 
" are constantly doing something like this." 



8 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

That the reader may be able to form some idea 
of the labour attendant upon one issue of our 
leading daily paper, of which you speak so con- 
temptuously, I subjoin an extract from a work by 
Henry Mayhew : — 

" The Times Newspaper of March 25th, 1865, 
" is now ..before us. It consists of eighteen large 
" pages, each more than two feet long and one and 
" a half broad ; so that the paper contains not fewer 
" than fifty-four square feet of printed matter. 
" Each of these eighteen pages consists of six 
" columns, and the whole 108, when pasted together 
" in one strip, would form a streamer very nearly 
" 200 feet long ; and as each column has, on an 
" average, as many as 226 lines, there are in round 
" numbers not fewer than 24,500 lines in the entire 
" body of the work ; so that, estimating each line to 
" be made up of ten words, there must be nearly 
" a quarter of a million of such words throughout 
." the publication. Then, assuming each word to 
" consist, generally speaking, of six letters, we 
" arrive at the result that there are nearly a million 
" and a half of types which have to be picked up 
'• and arranged in their places daily. 

" Look at the print as closely as you will — scan 
" it as minutely as any professional printer's eyes 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 9 

" would scrutinise it for errors of the press, and it 
" will be difficult to find one letter turned upside- 
" down — one mistake in spelling — one fault in 
''punctuation — one slip in grammar, or even one 
" inelegance in composition — throughout the entire 
" mass. And yet all this wonderful extent of 
" matter has been written, composed, and corrected, 
" in one day and night." 

A writer in ' The Glasgoiu Christian Neivs' says : 
" When it is considered that in every newspaper of 
" any pretensions there are articles, letters, and par- 
" agraphs, from thirty or forty different pens, there 
u is not much to be astonished at in occasional 
" blunders. If the Dean knew more of newspaper 
" matters he would be more charitable in his criti- 
" cism. Is it fair to expect in a leading article 
" composed at midnight, against time, and carried 
" off to the printers slip by slip as it is written, the 
" same rhythmical beauty and accuracy of expres- 
" sion as in any essay elaborated by the labour of 
" many days for a quarterly review ? Yet the 
" English of the Dean, corrected and re-corrected, 
" pales before that of ' The Times ' written perhaps 
11 by a wearied man at two in the morning/' 

You say, " Sometimes the editors of oar papers fall, 
a from their ignorance, into absurd mistakes", Cer- 



10 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

tainly not a very happy arrangement of words in 
which to remark upon the " absurd mistakes " of 
other people ; for we ought to be as careful what 
our sentences suggest, as what they affirm ; and we 
are so accustomed to speak of people falling from 
a state or position, that your words naturally 
suggest the absurd idea of editors falling from their 
ignorance. 

I submit it to the reviewers whether your sen- 
tence be not altogether faulty. The words, " from 
" their ignorance " should not come after " fall", 
they should precede it. But, for the reason just 
given, the w r ord "from" is objectionable in any 
part of the sentence, which would have been better 
written thus, Sometimes our editors, in consequence 
of their ignorance, fall into absurd mistakes. If 
you say that the defect in perspicuity is removed 
by the punctuation, I answer, in the language of 
Lord Karnes, " Punctuation may remove an ambi- 
" guity, but will never produce that peculiar beauty 
" which is perceived when the sense comes out 
" clearly and distinctly by means of a happy 
"arrangement". The same high authority tells 
us that a circumstance ought never to be placed 
between two capital members of a sentence ; or if 
it be so placed, the first word in the consequent 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 11 

member should be one that cannot connect it with 
that which precedes. In your sentence, unfortu- 
nately, the connection is perfect, and the suggestion 
of a ridiculous idea is the result. 

Nor is the foregoing the only instance of this 
kind of faulty arrangement. You say, " The great 
" enemies to understanding anything printed in 
" our language are the commas. And these are 
"inserted by the compositors without the slightest 
" compunction ". I should say that the great 
enemy to our understanding these sentences of 
yours is the want of commas; for though the 
defective position of words can never be compen- 
sated for by commas, they do frequently help to 
make the sense clearer, and would do so in this 
instance. How can we certainly know that the 
words " without the slightest compunction " refer 
to " inserted " ? They seem, by their order in the 
sentence, to describe the character of the composi- 
tors ; — they are " compositors without the slightest 
" compunction ". And then that word " compimc- 
"tion"; what an ill-chosen word of which to 
make use when speaking of punctuation. But 
this is only on a par with that which occurs in the 
first paragraph of your essay, where you speak of 
persons " mending their ways"; and in the very 



12 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

next paragraph you speak of the " Queen s high- 
" ivay", and of " by -roads" and "private roads". 

But to return. Not only do you describe the 
poor compositors as beings " without any compunc- 
" tion " ; but also as beings " without any mercy ". 
The sentence runs thus : " These c shrieks \ as they 
" have been called, are scattered up and down the 
"page by compositors without any mercy". I 
have often heard of " printers' devils", and I 
imagined them to be the boys who assist in the 
press-room ; but if your description of compositors 
is true, these are beings of an order very little 
superior. 

By-the-way, while noticing these ghostly exist- 
ences, I may just remark that immediately after 
your speaking of " things without life ", you 
startle us with that strange sentence of yours — " I 
" will introduce the body of my essay ". Introduce 
the body ! We are prepared for much in these 
days of " sensation " writing ; and the very preva- 
lence of the fashion for that style of composition 
pre-disposes any one of a quick imagination to 
believe, for the instant, that your essay on the 
' Queen's English ' is about to turn into a ( Strange 
1 Story \ 

" But to be more serious ", as you. say in your 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 13 

essay and then immediately give us a sentence in 
which the grave and the grotesque are most incon- 
gruously blended. I read, " A man does not lose 
"his mother now in the papers". I have read 
figurative language which spoke of lawyers being 
lost in their papers, and of students being buried in 
their books ; but I never read of a man losing his 
mother in the papers ; therefore I do not quite see 
what the adverb " now " has to do in the sentence. 
Ah ! stop a moment. You did not mean to speak 
of a man losing his mother in the papers. I per- 
ceive by the context that what you intended to 
say was something of this sort : — According to the 
papers; a man does not now lose his mother ; — but 
that is a very different thing. How those little 
prepositions " from " and " in " do perplex you ; or 
rather, how greatly your misuse of them perplexes 
your readers. 

With the adverbs also you are equally at fault. 
You say, " In all abstract cases where we merelv 
"speak of numbers the verb is better singular/' 
Here the placing of the adverb " merely " makes 
it a limitation of the following word " speak " ; and 
the question might naturally enough be asked, But 
what if we ivrite of numbers ? The adverb, being 
intended to qualify the word " numbers ", should 



14 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

have been placed immediately after it. The sen- 
tence would then have read, " In all abstract cases 
" where we speak of numbers merely, the verb is 
" better singular." So also in the sentence, " I only 
" bring forward some things " the adverb "only" is 
similarly misplaced ; for, in the following sentence, 
the words " Plenty more might be said ", show that 
the " only " refers to the " some things ", and not 
to the fact of your bringing them forward. The 
sentence should therefore have been, "I bring 
" forward some things only. Plenty more might 
" be said." Again, you say " Still, though too 
" many commas are bad, too few are not without 
" inconvenience also." Here the adverb " also ", 
in consequence of its position, applies to " incon- 
" venience " ; and the sentence signifies that too 
few commas are not without inconvenience besides 
being bad. Doubtless, what you intended was, 
" Still, though too many commas are bad, too few 
" also are not without inconvenience." 

Blair, speaking of adverbs, says, "The fact is, 
" with respect to such adverbs as only, vjholly, at 
" least, and the rest of that tribe, that, in common 
" discourse, the tone and emphasis we use in pro- 
nouncing them, generally serve to show their 
"reference, and to make the meaning clear; and 



IRE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 15 

" hence we acquire the habit of throwing them in 
" loosely in the course of a period. But in writ- 
41 ing ", [and I wish you to notice this, because it 
bears upon a remark in your letter to me,] " But 
" in writing, where a man speaks to the eye and not 
" to the ear, he ought to he more accurate, and so to 
" connect those adverts with the vjords which they 
*■ qualify as to put his meaning out of doubt upon 
" the first inspection" 

In my former letter to you, I quoted as the basis 
of some remarks I had to make, the well known 
rule that " those parts of a sentence which are 
" most closely connected in their meaning, should 
" be as closely as possible connected in position/' 
In your reply you speak of my remarks as " the 
" fallacious application of a supposed rule." Whe- 
ther my application of the rule be fallacious or 
not, let others judge from this letter ; and as to 
whether the rule itself be only " a supposed rule ", 
or whether it is not, on the contrary, a standard 
rule emanating from the highest authorities, let 
the following quotations decide. 

I read in Karnes's 'Elements of Criticism', 
" Words expressing things connected in the thought, 
" ought to be placed as near together as possible." 

I read in Campbell's 'Philosophy of Rhetoric, 



16 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

"In English and other modern languages, the 
<c speaker doth not enjoy that boundless latitude 
" which an orator of Athens or of Eome enjoyed 
" when haranguing in the language of his country. 
u With us, who admit very few inflections, the 
" construction, and consequently the sense, depends 
" almost entirely on the order." 

I read in Blair's 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles 
* Lettres\ " The relation which the words, or the 
" members of a period, bear to one another, cannot 
" be pointed out in English, as in Greek or in Latin, 
" by means of terminations ; it is ascertained only 
" by the position in which they stand. Hence a 
" capital rule in the arrangement of sentences is, 
" that the words, or the members, most nearly related 
" should be placed in the sentence, as near to each 
" other as possible ; so as to make their mutual 
" relation clearly appear." 

See also 'Hurray's Grammar 9 , part 2, in the 
Appendix ; likewise, ' The Elements of English 
i Composition', by David Irving, ll.d., chapter 7 ; 
and the 'Grammar of Rhetoric, by Alexander 
Jamieson, ll.d., chapter 3, book 3. 

As an illustrative example of the violation of 
this rule, take the following sentences. "It con- 
" tained ", says Swift, " a warrant for conducting 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 17 

" me and my retinue to Traldragdubb or Trildrog- 
" drib, for it is pronounced both ways, as near as I 
" can remember, by a 'party of ten horse!' The 
words in italics must be construed with the parti- 
ciple " conducting ", but they are placed so far 
from that word, and so near the word "pronounced", 
that at first they suggest a meaning perfectly 
ridiculous. 

Again, in the course of a certain examination 
which took place in the House of Commons in the 
year 1809, Mr. Dennis Browne said, the witness 
had been " ordered to withdraw from the bar in 
" consequence of being intoxicated, by the motion 
" of an honourable member." This remark, as 
might have been expected, produced loud and^ 
general laughter. The speaker intended to say, 
that, " in consequence of being intoxicated, the 
" witness, by the motion of an honourable member, 
" had been ordered to withdraw from the bar." 

A similar error occurs in a work by Isaac 
DTsraeli. He meant to relate that, " The beaux of 
" that day, as well as the women, used the abomi- 
u nable art of painting their faces " ; but he writes, 
" The beaux of that day used the abominable art 
" of painting their faces, as well as the women " ! 

In your essay, you say, " I remember, when the 

c 



18 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" French band of the 'Guides' were in this country, 
" reading in the ' Illustrated News' ". Were the 
Frenchmen, when in this country, reading in ' The 
'Illustrated News'? or did you mean that you 
remembered reading in ( The Illustrated News', 
when the band of the French Guides, &c ? 

You say also, "It is not so much of the great 
"highway itself of the Queen's English that I 
" would now speak, as of some of the laws of the 
" road ; the by-rules, to compare small things 
" with great, which hang up framed at the various 
" stations ". What are the great things which 
hang up framed at the various stations ? If you 
meant that the by-rules hang up framed at the 
various stations, the sentence would have been 
better thus, " the laws of the road ; or, to compare 
" small things with great, the by-rules which hang 
" up framed at the various stations ". 

So, too, in that sentence which introduces the 
tody of your essay, you speak of " the reluctance 
" which we in modern Europe have to giving any 
" prominence to the personality of single individ- 
" uals in social intercourse " ; and yet it was 
evidently not of single individuals in social inter- 
course that you intended to speak, but of giving, 
in social intercourse, any prominence to the 



II 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 19 

personality of single individuals. Your language 
expresses a meaning different from that which was 
intended : just as does Goldsmith's language when, 
in the following tautological sentence, he says, 
"The Greeks, fearing to be surrounded on all 
" sides, wheeled about and halted, with the river 
" on their backs." Talk of Baron Munchausen ! 
Why, here was an army of Munchausens. They 
" wheeled about and halted, with the river on their 
" backs." 

An accurate writer will always avoid the possi- 
bility of his sentences' having a double meaning ; 
yet the following extract is from a certain journal 
which started with the avowed intention of setting 
the rest of the literary world an example of pure 
English : — " On Saturday morning a man, sup- 
" posed to be a doctor of philosophy, threw a stick 
" at the window at which the King of Prussia 
" was witnessing the defiling of a detachment of 
" soldiers " ! This is almost as rich as Dr. Blair's 
description of disappointed ambition : — 

" Ambition, half convicted of her folly, 
Hangs down the head, and reddens at the tale." 

Blair 1 s Grave. 

Once more, you say, " When I hear a person 
" use a queer expression, or pronounce a name in 

c 2 



20 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" reading differently from his neighbours, it always 
" goes down, in my estimate of him, with a minus 
" sign before it — stands on the side of deficit, not 
" of credit." Poor fellow ! So he falls in your 
estimation, merely because when " reading differ- 
" ently from his neighbours," you hear him " pro- 
" nounce a name ". Would you have him pass 
over the names without pronouncing them ? The 
fact is, that in the very words in which you 
censure a small fault of another person, you 
expose for censure a greater fault of your own. 
The pronunciation of proper names is a subject 
upon which philologists are not in every case 
unanimous ; and to differ where the wise are not 
agreed, if it be a fault, cannot be a great fault ; 
but to publish a sentence like yours, having in it 
a clause with what the French call a " squinting 
" construction ", * is to commit a fault such as no 
one would expect to find in l A Plea J "or the Queen's 
' English \ The words " in reading ", look two 
ways at once, and may be construed either with the 
words which precede, or with those which follow. 
We may understand you to say, "pronounce a 
"name in reading"; or, "in reading differently 
" from his neighbours ". A more striking example 
* " Construction louche". 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 21 

of this ludicrous error could scarcely have been 
given. 

Dr. Campbell, in speaking of similar instances 
of bad arrangement, says, " In all the above 
" instances there is what may be justly termed 
" a constructive ambiguity ; that is, the words are 
" so disposed in point of order, as to render them 
" really ambiguous, if, in that construction which 
" the expression first suggests, any meaning were 
" exhibited, As this is not the case, the faulty 
" order of the words cannot properly be considered 
" as rendering the sentence ambiguous, but as 
" rendering it obscure. It may indeed be argued 
" that, in these and the like examples, the least 
" reflection in the reader will quickly remove the 
* obscurity. But why is there any obscurity to be 
" removed ? Or why does the writer require more 
" attention from the reader, or the speaker from 
" the hearer, than is absolutely necessary ? It 
u ought to be remembered, that whatever applica- 
" tion we must give to the words, is, in fact, so 
" much deducted from what we owe to the senti- 
" ments. Besides, the effort that is exerted in a 
" very close attention to the language, always 
"weakens the effect which the thoughts were 
u intended to produce in the mind. ' By per- 



22 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" ' spicuity ', as Quintillian justly observes, ' care 
" ' is taken, not that the hearer may understand, if 
" ' he will, but that he must understand, whether 
" ' he will or not.' * Perspicuity, originally and 
" properly, implies transparency, such as may be 
" ascribed to air, glass, water, or any other medium 
" through which material objects are viewed. 
" From this original and proper sense it has been 
" metaphorically applied to language ; this being, 
" as it were, the medium through which we per- 
" ceive the notions and sentiments of a speaker. 
" Now, in corporeal things, if the medium through 
" which we look at any object is perfectly trans- 
" parent, our whole attention is fixed on the object ; 
" we are scarcely sensible that there is a medium 
" which intervenes, and we can hardly be said to 
"perceive it. But if there is any flaw in the 
u medium, if we see through it but dimly, if the 
" object is imperfectly represented, or if we know 
" it to be misrepresented, our attention is imme- 
" diately taken off the object to the medium. We 
" are then anxious to discover the cause, either of 
" the dim and confused representation, or of the 
" misrepresentation, of things which it exhibits, 
u that so the defect in vision may be supplied by 
*' Instit\ lib. viii. cap 2. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 23 

" judgment. The case of language is precisely 
" similar. A discourse, then, excels in perspicuity 
u when the subject engrosses the attention of the 
" hearer, and the diction is so little minded by 
" him, that he can scarcely be said to be conscious 
"it is through this medium he sees into the 
" speaker's thoughts. On the contrary, the least 
" obscurity, ambiguity, or confusion in the style, 
* instantly removes the attention from the senti- 
"ment to the expression, and the hearer endeav- 
" ours, by the aid of reflection, to correct the 
■' imperfections of the speaker's language." 

In contending for the law of position, as laid 
down by Lord Karnes, Dr. Campbell, and others, 
I do so on the ground that the observance of this 
law contributes to that most essential quality in 
all writings, — perspicuity; and although I would 
not on any account wish to see all sentences con- 
structed on one uniform plan, I maintain that the 
law of position must never be violated when such 
violation ivould in any way obscure the meaning. 
Let your meaning still be obvious, and you may 
vary your mode of expression as you please ; and 
your language will be the richer for the variation. 
Let your meaning be obscure, and no grace of 
diction, nor any music of a well-turned period, 



24 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

will make amends to your readers for their being 
liable to misunderstand you. 

In noticing my remarks upon this part of the 
subject, you say, " The fact is, the rules of 
" emphasis come in, in interruption of your sup- 
" posed general law of position/' Passing over 
the inelegant stuttering, "in, in, in", in this 
sentence, I reply to your observation. The rules 
of emphasis, and what you are pleased to call 
" the supposed general law of position ", are entirely 
independent of each other, and can no more clash 
than two parallel lines can meet. The rules of 
emphasis do not come " in, in interruption of the 
" general law of position." A sentence ought, 
under all circumstances, to be constructed accu- 
rately, whatever may chance to be the emphasis 
with which it will be read. A faulty construction 
may be made intelligible by emphasis, but no 
dependence on emphasis will justify a faulty con- 
struction. Besides, if the sentence is ambiguous, 
how will emphasis assist the reader to the author's 
meaning ? Where shall he apply the emphasis ? 
He must comprehend what is ambiguous, in order 
that what is ambiguous may by him be compre- 
hended, which is an absurdity. 

Emphasis may be very useful to me in explain- 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 25 

ing to you my own meaning, or, in explaining 
another's meaning which I may understand; but 
it can be of no use to me to explain that which I 
do not understand. When to correctness of posi- 
tion is added justness of emphasis, your words 
will be weighty; but when the first of these 
qualities is wanting, not the thunder of a Boanerges 
will compensate for the deficiency. 

An amusing instance of wrong emphasis in 
reading the Scriptures was thus given in a recent 
number of 'The Reader'. "A clergyman, in the 
" course of the church service, coming to verses 
" 24 and 25 of 1 Sam. xxviii, which describe how 
" Saul, who had been abstaining from food in the 
" depth of his grief, was at last persuaded to eat, 
" read them thus : ' And the woman had a fat calf 
" ' in the house ; and she hasted, and killed it, and 
" ' took flour, and kneaded it, and did bake 
"'unleavened bread thereof: and she brought it 
" ' before Saul, and before his servants ; and they 
" ' did eat ' ". 

Continuing my review of your essay, I notice 
that it is said of a traveller on the Queen's high- 
way, " He bowls along it with ease in a vehicle 
" which a few centuries ago would have been 
" broken to pieces in a deep rut, or come to grief 



26 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

"in a bottomless swamp." There being here no 
words immediately before " come ", to indicate in 
what tense that verb is, I have to turn back to 
find the tense, and am obliged to read the sentence 
thus, " would have been broken to pieces in a deep 
"rut, or [would have been] come to grief in a 
" bottomless swamp " ; for, a part of a complex 
tense means nothing without the rest of the tense ; 
therefore, the rest of the tense ought always to be 
found in the sentence. Nor is it allowable, as in 
your sentence, to take part of the tense of a 
passive verb to eke out the meaning of an active 
verb given without any tense whatever. 

Further on, I find you speaking of " that fertile 
" source of mistakes among our clergy, the mispro- 
nunciation of Scripture proper names". It is 
not the "mispronunciation of Scripture proper 
" names " which is the source of mistakes ; the 
mispronunciation of Scripture proper names con- 
stitutes the mistakes themselves of which you are 
speaking ; and a thing cannot at the same time be 
a source, and that which flows from it. It appears 
that what you intended to speak of was, "that 
" fertile source of mistakes among our clergy, their 
" ignorance of Scripture proper names, the mispro- 
nunciation of which is quite inexcusable" 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 27 

Speaking on this subject, I may remark that, as 
you strongly advocate our following the Greeks 
in the pronunciation of their proper names, I hope 
you will be consistent and never again, in reading 
the Lessons, call those ancient cities Samaria and 
Philadelphia otherwise than Samaria and Phila- 
delphia. 

I was much amused by your attempt to set up 
the Church ' Prayer Book ' as an authority for the 
aspiration of the " h " in the word " humble " ; 
when, on the first page of the ' Morning Prayer \ 
we are exhorted to confess our sins "with an 
"humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart". 
As for the argument wdiich you base upon the 
alliterative style of the 'Prayer Booh' ; that argu- 
ment proves too much, to be in your favour ; for 
if, because we find the words " humble " and 
" hearty'' following each other, we are therefore to 
believe that it was the intention of the compilers 
of our beautiful ritual that we should aspirate the 
" h " in " humble ", as in " hearty " ; what was the 
intention of the compilers when, in the supplica- 
tion for the Queen, they required us to pray that 
we "may faithfully serve, honour, and humbly 
"obey her"? 

Towards the end of your essay you say, " Entail 



28 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" is another poor injured verb. Nothing ever leads 
" to anything as a consequence, or brings it about, 
" but it always entails it. This smells strong of 
" the lawyers clerk". It was a very proper ex- 
pression which Horace made use of when, speaking 
of over-laboured compositions, he said that they 
smelt of the lamp ; but it is scarcely a fit expres- 
sion which you employ, when, speaking of a certain 
word, you say, this smells strong of the lawyer's 
clerk. Lawyers or their clerks may be odious to 
you, but that does not give you the right to use an 
expression which implies that they are odorous. 

Just as we may know by the way in which a 
man deals with the small trials of life, how far he 
has attained a mastery over himself; so may we 
know by the way in which a writer deals with the 
small parts of speech, how far he has attained a 
mastery over the language. Let us see therefore 
how you manage the pronouns. 

I begin by noticing a remark which, in your 
letter to me, has reference to this part of the 
subject. You say, respecting my criticism on your 
essay, " Set to work in the same way with our 
" English version of the Bible, and what work you 
" would make of it " ! To this I repty : Our 
English version of the Bible is acknowledged to be, 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 29 

on the whole, excellent, whether considered with 
respect to its faithfulness to the originals, or with 
respect to its purity and elegance of language. Its 
doctrines, being divine, are, like their Author, 
perfect ; but the translation, being human, is 
frequently obscure.* You bid rue look at the 
" he " and " him " in Luke xix, 3, 4, 5. You surely 
do not defend the construction of these sentences ? 
See what Dr. Campbell says on this subject, in his 
' Philosophy of Rhetoric ', book ii, chap. 6. a It is 
. " easy to conceive that, in numberless instances, 
" the pronoun ' he ' will be ambiguous, when two or 
" more males happen to be mentioned in the same 
" clause of a sentence. In such a case we ought 
" always either to give another turn to the expres- 
" sion, or to use the noun itself, and not the 
" pronoun ; for when the repetition of a word is 
" necessary, it is not offensive. The translators of 

* " The Dean falls back upon the authority of Scripture in 
" defence of some of his indefensible positions. But examples of 
"bad grammar and bad construction can be found in King 
" James's translation ; and all our standard writers, not 
" excepting even Addison himself, to the study of whose works 
" we used to be told to give both day and night, have furnished 
" an abundant harvest of errors for the critics. Yet there is 
" good writing, and Mr. Moon's is good ; and there is bad 
" writing, and, in spite of the mending, the Dean's is bad."— 
The Nation, No. lix, p. 791. [A New York Journal,'] 



30 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

"the Bible have often judiciously used this 
" method ; I say judiciously, because, though the 
" other method is on some occasions preferable, yet, 
" by attempting the other, they would have run a 
" much greater risk of destroying that beautiful 
" simplicity which is an eminent characteristic of 
" Holy Writ. I shall take an instance from the 
" speech of Judah to his brother Joseph in Egypt. 
" l We said to my lord, The lad cannot leave his 
" ' father, for if he should leave his father, his 
" ' father would die.' Gen. xliv, 22. The words 
" ' his father ' are, in this short verse, thrice repeated, 
" and yet are not disagreeable, as they contribute 
" to perspicuity. Had the last part of the sentence 
" run thus, ' if he should leave his father he would 
" f die ', it would not have appeared from the ex- 
" pression, whether it were the child or the parent 
" that would die " 

A little attention to this matter would have 
saved you from publishing such a paragraph as the 
following ; " Two other words occur to me which 
" are very commonly mangled by our clergy. One 
" of these is ' covetous ' and its substantive i covet- 
" ' ousness \ I hope some who read these lines will 
" be induced to leave off pronouncing them ' covet- 
" t ious ' and ' covetiousness \ I can assure them 



THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 31 

" that when they do thus call them, one at least of 
a their hearers has his appreciation of their teaching 
" disturbed ".* You have so confusedly used your 
pronouns in the above paragraph, that it may be 
construed in ten thousand different ways. 

In some sentences your pronouns have actually 
no nouns to which they apply. For example, on 
page 192, "That nation ". What nation? You 
have not spoken of any nation whatever. You 
have spoken of " the national mind ", " the national 
" speech " and " national simplicity ", things per- 
taining to a nation, but have not spoken of a 
nation itself. So also, on page 195, "a journal 
11 published by these people ". By what people ? 
Where is the noun to which this relative pronoun 
refers ? In your head it may have been, but it 
certainly is not in your essay. 

The relation between nouns and pronouns is a 
great stumbling-block to most writers. The 
following sentence occurs in Hallam's ' Literature of 
'Europe': — "No one as yet had exhibited the 
" structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having 
" only examined them in dogs ". Human kidneys 
in dogs ! *f* 

* The italics are not the Dean's, 
t Breen's ' Modern English Literature '. 



32 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 

In a memoir of John Leyden, the shepherd boy, 
in 'Small Beginnings ; or, the Way to Get On\ 
there is, on page 104, the following passage : — 
" The Professor soon perceived, however, that the 
" intellectual qualities of the youth were superior 
a to those of his raiment ". Intellectual qualities 
of raiment ! 

In your essay, on page 196, you say, "I have 
" known cases where it has been thoroughly eradi- 
" cated ". " When I hear a man gets to his its ", 
says Wm. Cobbett, " I tremble for him " Now 
just read backwards with me, and let us see how 
many singular neuter nouns intervene before we 
come to the one to which your pronoun "it" 
belongs. " A tipple ", " a storm " " the charitable 
" explanation ", " the well-known infirmity ", " the 
a way " "ale ", " an apology ", "the consternation " 
" their appearance ", " dinner ", " the house ", " the 
" following incident " " his ed ", " a neighbouring 
"table", "a South-Eastern train", "a Great 
" Western " " Eeading " " a refreshment-room " 
" the ^atmosphere ", " the hair ", " the air " the 
" cholera " " his opinion " " this vulgarism ", 
" energy ", " self-respect ", " perception " " intelli- 
" gence " " habit ." Here we have it at last. Only 
twenty-eight nouns intervening between the pro- 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 33 

noun u it " and the noun " hahit " to which it 
refers! I could give additional examples from 
your essay, but surely this is enough, to show that 
the schoolmaster is needed by other people besides 
the Directors of the Great- Western and of the 
South-Eastern railways. 

One word in conclusion. You make the asser- 
tion that the possessive pronoun " its " " never 
" occurs in the English version of the Bible ". It 
is to be regretted that you have spoken so posi- 
tively on this subject. Probably the knowledge of 
our translators' faithfulness to the original text, 
and the fact of there being in Hebrew no neuter, 
may have led you and others into this error ; but 
look at Leviticus xxv, 5, " That which groweth of 
" its own accord ", and you will see that " its " the 
possessive of " it " does occur " in the English 
" version of the Bible ". 

I am, Eev. Sir, 

Yours most respectfully, 

G. WASHINGTON MOON. 






THE DEAFS ENGLISH: 



CEITICISM No. II; 

In Eeply to the Dean of Canterbury's 
Rejoinder. 



What ! is it possible that the Dean of Canterbury 
can have so forgotten the Scriptural precept " Be 
" courteous ", as to speak, in a public meeting, in 
such a manner about an absent antagonist, that the 
language is condemned by the assembly, and the 
Dean is censured by the public press ? Your own 
county paper, Reverend Sir, ' The South-Eastern 
1 Gazette,' in giving a report of your second lecture * 
in St George's Hall, Canterbury, makes the 
following observations : a Mr. G-. W. Moon issued 
" a pamphlet controverting many of the points 
" advanced by the Dean, and showing that the 
" reverend gentleman himself had been guilty of 
* Subsequently published in ' Good Words', June, 1863. 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 35 

" the very violations of good English which he had 
" so strongly condemned in others. The greater 
" portion of the Dean's lecture on Monday evening 
" was devoted to an examination of the statements 
" made by Mr. Moon, and to a defence of the 
" language employed by the Dean in his former 
" lecture. Opinions differ as to the success of the 
" reverend gentleman, many of his positions being 
" called in question ; while the epithets which he 
" did not hesitate to use, in speaking of an antago- 
" nist possessing some acquaintance with the 
" English language, were generally condemned. 
" These might and ought to have been avoided, 
" especially by one whose precepts and example 
" have their influence, for good or for harm, upon 
" the society in which he moves. ' Get wisdom, get 
" ' understanding, and forget it not ', is a text that 
" even the Dean of Canterbury might ponder over 
" with advantage ". 

What, too, is to be said of that language which, 
even in your calmer moments, you have not 
scrupled to apply to me ? You had, in your former 
essay,* worded a sentence so strangely, that it 
suggested a meaning perfectly ludicrous. I called 

* 'A Plea for the Queen's English 1 . — l Good Words', 
March, 1863. 

D 2 



36 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

your attention to this, first in a private letter, and 
afterwards in a pamphlet,* and, in your i Plea for 
'the Queen's English, No. II \ you indignantly ex- 
claim, in reference to my remarks, " We do not write 
" for idiots". Thank you for your politeness; I 
can make all excuses for hasty words spoken in 
unguarded moments ; but when a gentleman 
deliberately uses such expressions in print, he 
shows, by his complacent self-sufficiency, how 
much need he has to remember that it is possible 
to be worse than even an idiot. " Seest thou a 
" man wise in his own conceit ? there is more hope 
" of a fool than of him". Prov. xxvi, 12. 

Continuing your remarks on my criticisms, you 
say, " It must require, to speak in the genteel 
" language w 7 hich some of my correspondents 
a uphold, a most abnormal elongation of the auri- 
" cular appendages, for a reader to have suggested 
" to his mind a fall from the sublime height of 
11 ignorance down into the depth of a mistake." I 
spoke of editors falling into mistakes : it remained 
for the Dean of Canterbury to add, that they fell 
down into the depth of a mistake. You say you 
do not write for idiots ; who else would imagine 
that it were possible to fall up into a depth ? 

* The previous letter is a re-publication of that pamphlet. 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 37 

Eeverting to your expression, " abnormal elonga- 
" Hon of the auricular appendages ", — you recom- 
mended us, in your former essay, to use plainness 
of language, and, when we mean a spade, to say so, 
and not call it " a well-known oblong instrument 
" of manual husbandry " I wonder you did not 
follow your own teaching, and, in plain language, 
call me an ass; but I suppose you considered the 
language plain enough, and certainly it is : there 
can be no doubt as to your meaning. I must leave 
it to the public to decide whether I have deserved 
such a distinguished title. Eecipients of honours 
do not generally trouble themselves about merit : 
but, as I am very jealous for the character of him 
who has thus flatteringly distinguished me ; and as 
some captious persons may call in question his 
right to confer the title of ass ; I shall endeavour, 
in the following pages, to silence for ever all 
cavillers, and to prove, to demonstration, that he 
did not give away that which did not belong to 
him. 

Of my former letter, you say that, when you 
first looked it through, it reminded you of the old 
story of the attorney's endorsement of the brief, — 
"No case: abuse the Plaintiff M ; for, the objec- 
tions brought by me against the matter of your 



38 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

essay, are very few and by no means weighty, as I 
have spent almost all my labour in criticisms on 
your style and sentences. Precisely ! I wished 
to show, by your own writings, that so far were 
you from being competent to teach others English 
composition, you had need yourself to study its 
first principles ; but there is no abuse whatever in 
that letter : you had no precedent in my remarks 
for your language; and as for my having made 
but few objections to your essay, I will at once 
give you convincing proof that it was not because 
I had no more objections to make. 

I had written the following paragraph before 
your second essay was published ; and although, 
in that essay, you defend the statement you had 
previously made, I conceive that you have not by 
any means established your position. 

I venture to assert that, what we say figuratively 
of some not over- wise persons, we may say literally 
of you, — " You do not know how the cat jumps " ; 
for, what do you tell us ? You tell us that it is 
wrong to say, " The cat jumped on to the chair ", 
the "to", you remark, "being wholly unneeded 
" and never used by any careful writer or speaker." 
With all due deference to such a high authority on 
such a very important matter, I beg leave to 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 39 

observe that, when we say, " The cat jumped on 
" to the chair ", we mean that the cat jumped from 
somewhere else to the chair, and alighted on it ; 
but when we say, " The cat jumped on the chair ", 
we mean that the cat was on the chair already, 
and that, while there, she jumped. The circum- 
stances are entirely different ; and according to the 
difference in the circumstances, so should there be 
a difference in the language used to describe them 
respectively. It is evident that in watching the 
antics of puss, you received an impulse from her 
movements, and you yourself jumped — to a wrong 
conclusion* 

Again, you say, " I pass on now to spelling, on 
" which I have one or two remarks to make. The 
" first shall be, on the trick now so universal " [' so 
1 universal ' ! as if universality admitted of com- 

* ' The Edinburgh Revieiv\ after objecting to some of my 
remarks as hypercritical, says, " It is not meant that all Mr. 
" Moon's comments are of this kind. The Dean's style is 
" neither particularly elegant nor correct, and his adversary 
" sometimes hits him hard ; besides in one or two cases success- 
" fully disputing his judgments. On the important question 
" (for instance) whether we should say the cat jumped ( on 
"'to the chair', or ( on the chair', we must vote against 
" the Dean, who unjustly condemns the former expres- 
" sion." 



40 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

parison] "across the Atlantic, and becoming in 
" some quarters common among us in England, of 
" leaving out the ( u 9 in the termination 'our 9 ; 
" writing honor, favor, neighbor, Savior, &c. Now 
" the objection to this is not only that it makes 
" very ugly words, totally unlike anything in the 
"English language before, but that it obliterates 
" all trace of the derivation and history of the 
" word. The late Archdeacon Hare, in an 
"article on English orthography in the ' Philo- 
" ' logical Museum 9 , some years ago, expressed a 
" hope that ' such abominations as honor and favor 
" ' would henceforth be confined to the cards of 
" ' the great vulgar/ There we still see them, and 
" in books printed in America ; and while we are 
" quite contented to leave our fashionable friends 
" in such company, I hope we may none of us be 
" tempted to join it." I will tell you where else 
these " abominations " may be found, besides being 
found " on the cards of the great vulgar ". They 
may be found in a volume of poems by Henry 
Alford, Dean of Canterbury ; a volume published, 
not in America, but in this country, by Eivingtons 
of Pall Mall. The following is a specimen taken 
from his "Kecent Poems ". Two verses will 
suffice. 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 41 

EECENT POEMS. 
A WISH. 

" Would it were mine, amidst the changes 
" Through which our varied lifetime ranges, 
" To live on Providence's bounty 
" Down in some favored western county. 

***** 

" There may I dwell with those who love me ; 
" And when the earth shall close above me, 
" My memory leave a lasting savor 
" Of grace divine, and human favor" 

It is true that there is a preface to the volume, 
and that it accounts for the spelling of such 
words, by informing us that many of the poems 
have been published in America ; but that is no 
justification of your retaining the Transatlantic 
spelling which you condemn. I guess you do not 
mean to imply that it is with poems as with 
persons, — i.e., that a temporary residence abroad 
occasions them to acquire habits of pronuncia- 
tion, &c, not easily thrown off on a return to the 
mother country ; and yet, if this be not what the 
preface means, pray, what does it mean ? Per- 
haps, as mountain travellers brand certain words 
on their alpenstocks, to show the height that has 
been attained by those using them, so you have 



42 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 

thought well to favor us with this savor of Ameri- 
canisms, to show us that your poems have had the 
honor of being republished on the other side of 
the Atlantic. 

It appears to me that the preface serves only to 
make matters worse ; for it shows that the objec- 
tionable form of orthography is retained with your 
knowledge and your sanction, for I have quoted 
from the " Third Edition" How is this ? You 
say that the spelling in question should be confined 
to the cards of " the great vulgar " ; and you your- 
self adopt that very spelling ! 

Before quitting the subject of the spelling of 
words of the above class, I beg leave to say that 
although there are, in our language, certain words 
ending in " our ", which, as we have seen, are 
sometimes spelt with " or " only ; as honor, favor, 
&c, without interference with the sense, honor 
being still the same as honour, and favor the same 
as favour; there is one word of this class, the 
meaning of which changes with the change of 
spelling ; namely, the word tenour, which, with the 
" u ", means continuity of state ; as in ' Gray's 
'Elegy' — 

" Along the cool sequestered vale of life 

" They kept the noiseless tenour of their way :" 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 43 

but without the "u", signifies a certain clef in 
music. This distinction has been very properly 
noticed by Dr. Nugent in his \ English and French 
'Dictionary' ; there the words stand thus : — 

" Tenor, alto, m. 

" Tenour, maniere, f." 

but you, after lecturing us upon the impropriety of 
leaving out the "u" in "honour", and in "favour", 
although the omission in these words makes no 
alteration in the sense, yourself leave the " u " out 
of "tenour", and speak, on page 429, of the 
" tenor " of your essay ! If this be not straining 
at gnats and swallowing a camel, I do not know what 
is. What with the tenor of your essay, and the 
bass, or baseness, of your English, you certainly are 
fiddling for us a very pretty tune. It is to be 
hoped that if we do not dance quite correctly, to 
your new music, you will take into consideration 
the extreme difficulty we have to understand the 
contradictory instructions we have received. 

The following remarks upon this subject are 
from ' The Round Table \ a New York Journal : — 
" The mode of spelling this class of words under 
" discussion, which is now getting more and more 
" established, is only a part of the simplifying 



44 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" process which has been going on in the ortho- 
" graphy of the English language for two hundred 
" and fifty years. Wherever such a process tends 
"to obscure the origin of words it ought to be 
" checked. But this cannot be said in the present 
" case ; for honor and the like come to us from the 
"Latin, and in fact seem to have retained their 
" Latin form in French originally, as the following 
" lines will show — lines as old as the times of the 
" Norman minstrels : 

" ' Les terres, les ficus, les honors.' 
" ' Des Daneiz firent grant dolor. 1 

" English usage has never been settled or uniform 
" with regard to the spelling of words ending in 
" our. Every one knows this, and yet it will be 
" pleasant to illustrate the fact by a few examples. 
" Milton, who was always particular about his 
" spelling, is wicked enough sometimes to write 

" thus : 

" c honor dishonorable, 

" ( Sin- bred, how have ye troubl'd all mankind 

" ' With shews instead, meer shews of seeming pure/ 

" ( Paradise Lost,' First Edition, Book iv. Line 314. 

" I wonder what the old bard would have said if 
" Dean Alford had been there to tell him that the 
" spelling in the above passage was an 'abomina- 



THE DEANS ENGLISH. 45 

" * tion/ Probably he would have extended to him 
"the same polite invitation that Samson did to 
" Harapha, namely, just to come within reach of his 
" fists. Bacon also does not scruple to spell after the 
" same fashion when it pleases him ; as is seen 
" here : ' In sutes of favor the first comming ought 
" ' to take little place ;' ' hee doth not raine wealth, 
" l nor shine honors and vertues upon men equally ;' 
" where honors is the word given in the manuscript. 
" It is a little singular that Sidney always addresses 
"his letters to the 'Eight Honorable,' but com- 
" monly prefers to say ' your honour! 

" Every writer seems to follow his own notions 
" about the spelling of words in our, and those 
" ' abominations ' in the eyes of Archdeacon Hare 
" and Dean Alford have been freely used by the 
"best authors through all periods of English 
" literature." 

You censure the editors of newspapers for 
using the expression "open up", and you say, 
" what it means more than open would mean, I 
" never could discover ". Permit me to say that, if 
you look at home, you will find in your own 
periodical, in the identical number of it containing 
this remark of yours, two Doctors of Divinity 
using the very expression you condemn; a third 



46 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

Doctor of Divinity using an expression very 
similar ; and a fourth, yourself, using an expression 
which, under the circumstances, is deserving of 
severe censure. To begin with the Editor; the 
Eev. Norman Macleod, d.d., says, on page 204, 
" He opens up in the parched desert a well that 
" refreshes us ". The Eev. John Caird, d.d., says, 
on page 237, " Now these considerations may open 
11 up to us one view of the expediency of Christ's 
" departure ". The Eev. Thomas Guthrie, d.d., 
says, on page 163, " the past, with its sin and folly, 
" rose up before his eyes ". I suppose you would 
say, "What rose up means more than rose would 
"mean, I cannot discover". Probably not, but 
just tell us what you mean by saying, on page 197, 
" Even so the language grew up ; its nerve, and 
" vigour, and honesty, and toil, mainly brought 
" down to us in native Saxon terms ". If the word 
" up " be redundant in the quoted sentences of the 
other learned Doctors, what shall we say of it in 
your own ? In their expressions there is sense ; so, 
too, is there in your expression ; but it is a kind of 
sense best described by the word nonsense. The 
language grew up by being brought down ! Sure, 
it must have been the Irish language that your 
honour was spaking of. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 47 

Now for your reply to my letter. In condem- 
nation of your wretched English, I had cited some 
of the highest authorities ;* and you coolly say, 
" I must freely acknowledge to Mr. Moon, that not 
" one of the gentlemen whom he has named has 
" ever been my guide, in whatever study of the 
" English language I may have accomplished, or in 
" what little I may have ventured to write in that 
" language " " I have a very strong persuasion 
" that common sense, ordinary observation, and the 
" prevailing usage of the English people, are quite 
" as good guides in the matter of the arrangement 
" of sentences, as [are] the rules laid down by 
" rhetoricians and grammarians." Thus we come 
to the actual truth of the matter. It appears that 
you really have never made the English language 
your study ! All that you know about it is what 
you have picked up by " ordinary observation " ; -f- 
and the result is, that you tell us it is correct to 
say, "He is iviser than me; I and that you speak 

* Dr. Campbell, Lord Kames, Hugh Blair, Lindley Murray, 
and others. 

t " It is notorious that at our public schools, every boy has 
" been left to pick up his English where and how he could."— 
Harrison ' On the English Language', preface, p. v. 

t This subject was ably commented on by a writer in the 
1 English Churchman '. See Appendix. 



48 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 

of " a decided weak point " in a man's character ! 
You must have a decidedly weak point in your 
own character, to set up yourself as a teacher of 
the English language, when the only credentials of 
qualification that you can produce are such sen- 
tences as these. 

You sneer at " Americanisms ", but you would 
never find an educated American who would 
venture to say, " It is me ", for " It is I " ; or, " It 
" is him ", for " It is he " ; or, " different to ", for 
" different from ". And nowhere are the use and 
the omission of the " h " as an aspirate, so clearly 
distinguished as in the United States. In confir- 
mation of this statement turn over the pages of 
that humorous American work, " Artemus Ward, 
" His Booh " and among all the vulgarisms and 
misspellings there, you will scarcely ever find that 
the aspirate " h " is omitted. 

With regard to the purport of your second essay 
on the Queen's English, it is, as I expected it 
would be, chiefly a condemnation of my former 
letter ; but you very carefully avoid those parti- 
cular errors which I exposed ; such as, " Sometimes 
" the editors of our papers fall, from their igno- 
" ranee, into absurd mistakes " ; and, " A man does 
" not lose his mother now in the papers ". There 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 41 

are, however, in your second essay, some very 
strange specimens of Queen's English. You say, 
" The one rule, of all others, which he cites ". 
Now as, in defence of your particular views, you 
appeal largely to common sense, let me ask, in 
the name of that common sense, How can one 
thing be another thing ? How can one rule be of all 
other rules the one which I cite ? If this be 
Queen's English, you may well say of the authori- 
ties I quoted, "There are more things in the 
" English language than seem to have been dreamt 
" of in their philosophy " ; for I am quite sure 
that they never dreamt of any such absurdities. 

In my former letter I drew attention to your 
misplacing of adverbs ; and now you appear to be 
trying, in some instances, to get over the difficulty 
by altogether omitting the adverbs, and supplying 
their places by adjectives ; and this is not a new 
error with you. You had previously said, " If 
" with your inferiors, speak no coarser than usual ; 
" if with your superiors, no finer!' We may cor- 
rectly say, " a certain person speaks coarsely " ; but 
it is absurdly ungrammatical to say, "he speaks 
" coarse " ! In your second essay, you say, " the 
"words nearest connected", instead of "the words 
" most nearly connected " ; but this will never do ; 

E 



50 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

the former error, that of position, was bad enough, 
it was one of syntax ; the latter error, that of 
substituting one part of speech for another, is still 
worse. I have spoken of your ''decided weak 
"point" : I will now give another example, a very 
remarkable one, for it is an example of using an 
adjective instead of an adverb, in a sentence in 
which you are speaking of using an adverb instead 
of an adjective. You say, "The fact seems to be, 
" that in this case I was using the verb ' read ' in 
u a colloquial and scarcely legitimate sense, and 
" that the adverb seems necessary, because the 
"verb is not a strict neuter-substantive." We 
may properly speak of a word as being not strictly 
a neuter-substantive; but w r e cannot properly 
speak of a substantive as being " strict ". So much 
for the grammar of the sentence; now for its 
meaning. Your sentence is an explanation of your 
use of the word "oddly", in the phrase, "would 
" read rather oddly " ; and oddly enough you have 
explained it: "would read" is the conditional 
form of the verb ; and how can that ever be either 
a neuter-substantive, or a substantive of any other 
land ? 

In your former essay you prepared us to expect 
many strange things ; I suppose we are to receive 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 51 

this as one of them. You told us, " Plenty more 
" might be said about grammar ; plenty that would 
" astonish some teachers of it. I may say some- 
a thing of this another time." Take all the credit 
you like ; you have well earned it ; for you have 
more than redeemed your promise ; you have 
astonished other persons besides teachers of gram- 
mar. 

Again, you say, " The whole number is divided 
" into two classes : the first class, and the last 
" class. To the former of these belong three : to 
"the latter, one" That is, "To the former of 
" these belong three ; to the latter [belong] one "; 
one belong ! When, in the latter part of a com- 
pound sentence, we change the nominative, we 
must likewise change the verb, that it may agree 
with its nominative. The error is repeated in the 
very next sentence. You say, " There are three 
" that are ranged under the description ' first ' : 
" and one that is ranged under the description 
" ' last V That is, " There are three that are 
" ranged under the description ' first ' ; and [there 
" are] one that is ranged under the description 
" ' last '." There are one ! The sentence cannot 
be correctly analysed in any other way. It is true 
we understand what you mean ; just as we under- 

E 2 



52 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

stand the meaning of the childish prattle of our 
little ones ; but, because your sentence is not 
unintelligible, it is not, on that account, the less 
incorrect. 

An esteemed friend of mine, Colonel Shaw of 
Ayr Castle, in reviewing your first essay on the 
Queen's English, thus wrote concerning a similar 
error of yours : — " We find this teacher playing 
" with the inaccuracy (so he calls it) of saying, 
" ' Twice one are two ', and ' Three times three are 
" ' nine! In order to prove the grammatical incor- 
" rectness of these two assertions, the clever Dean 
" alters the form of the expression, and, 'presto!' 
" the juggle is concluded. ' What we want/ says 
" the Dean, l being simply this, that three taken 
" ' three times makes up, is equal to, nine.' Now, 
" admitting this to be correct, Mr. Dean, — admit- 
" ting three not to be plural any more than one ; 
" which is just what you should prove, but is also 
"just what you do not attempt to prove; never- 
" theless, admitting your improved premises ; yet, 
" when we say, in another mode, what you 'want* 
" us to say, if that other mode has a plural 
" nominative, the verb must also be plural ; and, 
" we say, ' three times ' must be plural, and so must 
" even l three \ For example, I might say of a 



THE DEANS ENGLISH. 53 

" man and his wife, — ' they twain are one flesh ' ; 
" but you, Mr. Dean, might reply to me, as you are 
" in fact now doing, — ' What we want to say is 
" ' simply this, — this man is, and that woman is, 
"'■one flesh, — makes up, is equal to, one flesh'. 
" All very good ! But as long as we speak of 
" them as ' twain 9 , we must, in order to be gram- 
" matical, employ the word 'are ' respecting them." 

It appears to me that, before you have finished 
a sentence, you have forgotten how you began it. 
You say, " We call a ' cup-board ' a c cubbard ', a 
11 ' half-penny ' a ' haepenny ', and so of many 
" other compound words ". Had you begun your 
sentence thus, We speak of a rt cup-board " as a 
" cubbard ", of a a half-penny ,? as a a haepenny ", 
it would have been correct to say, a and so of 
" many other compound words " ; because the 
clause would mean, " and so [ive speak] of many 
" other compound words M ; but having begun the 
sentence with, " We call ", it is sheer nonsense to 
finish it with, " and so of" ; for it is saying, " and 
" so [ire call] of many other compound words " 

Elsewhere you say, " Call a spade { a spade ', not 
" an oblong instrument of manual husbandry ; let 
" home be ' home ', not a residence ; a place r a 
"'place', not a locality; and so of the rest" 



54 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

What is your meaning in this last clause ? The 
sentence is undoubtedly faulty, whether the words 
" and so of" are considered in connexion with the 
first clause, or in connexion with the following 
one. In the former case we must say, "and 
" [speak] so of the rest " ; and in the latter case we 
must say, " and [let us speak] so of the rest ". In 
neither case can we use the word "call", with 
which you have begun your sentence. 

Here is another specimen of your ' Queen's 
' English ', or rather, of the Deans English ; a 
specimen in which the verbs, past and present, are 
in a most delightful state of confusion. You are 
speaking of your previous essay, and of the rea- 
sons you had for writing it ; and you say, a If I 
" had believed the Queen's English to have been 
" rightly laid down by the dictionaries and the 
"professors of rhetoric, I need not have troubled 
" myself to write about it. It was exactly because 
" I did not believe this, but found both of them in 
" many cases going astray, that I ventured to put 
" in my plea." 

Now, " I need not " is present, not past ; and it 
is of the past you are speaking ; you should there- 
fore have said, " I needed not " or " I should not 
" have needed ". And the verb " troubled ", which 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 55 

you have put in the past, should have been in the 
present ; just as the verb " need ", which you have 
put in the present, should have been in the past ; 
for you were not speaking of what you would not 
have needed to have clone, but of what you would 
not have needed to do. The sentence, then, should 
have been, " If I had believed so-and-so, / should 
" not have needed to trouble myself". 

I may notice also that, in the above sentence, 
you speak of rules laid down by the "dictionaries", 
and the " 'professors of rhetoric " ; thus substituting, 
in one case, the works for the men ; and, in the 
other case, speaking of the men themselves. Why 
not either speak of the " compilers of dictionaries *', 
and the u professors of rhetoric" ; or else speak of 
the " dictionaries ", and the " treatises on rhetoric " ? 
Write either figuratively or literally, whichever 
you please ; or write in each style, by turns, if you 
like ; for, variety in a series of sentences, where 
there is uniformity in each, is a beauty; but 
variety in a single sentence is merely confusion : 
witness the following extract from Gilfillan's 
'Literary Portraits' : — " Channing's mind was 
" planted as thick with thoughts, as a backwood 
" of his own magnificent land." A backwood 
'planted with thoughts ! What a glorious harvest 



56 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

for the writers of America ! says Breen. How- 
ever, I must not enter upon the subject of style, 
lest I should extend this letter to a wearisome 
length. Suffice it to say, you do not mean that 
you found the professors of rhetoric walking off with 
the books ; though you do tell us you "found both 
" of them [the dictionaries and the professors of 
rhetoric] in many cases going astray ". 

Continuing my review, I have to notice that you 
say, " His difficulty (and I mention it because it 
" may be that of many others besides him) is that 
" he has missed the peculiar sense of the preposi- 
" tion by as here used." Tour difficulty seems to 
be, that you have missed seeing the peculiar sense 
{nonsense) of your own expressions. You tell us 
that you mention your correspondent's difficulty, 
because it may be a difficulty of many other per- 
sons, besides being a difficulty of him ! 

Finally, as regards my criticisms on your gram- 
mar ; you say, " The next point which I notice 
" shall be the use of the auxiliaries ' shall 9 and 
" ' will \ Now here we are at once struck by a 
" curious phenomenon." We certainly are ; — the 
phenomenon of a gentleman setting himself up to 
lecture on the use of verbs, and publicly proclaim- 
ing his unfitness for the task, by confusing the 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 57 

present and the future in the very first sentence he 
utters on the subject. 

Speaking of the verb "to progress", you say, 
" The present usage makes the verb neuter ", and, 
" We seem to want it ; and if we do, and it does 
" not violate any known law of formation, by all 
" means let us have it. True, it is the first of its 
" own family ; we have not yet formed aggress, 
« re g resS} & c>? i n to verbs." If you will allow me to 
digress from the consideration of your grammar to 
the consideration of your accuracy, I will show 
that you transgress in making this statement. In 
the folio edition of Bailey's 'Universal Dictionary', 
published in 1755, I find the very verbs, "to 
"aggress" and "to regress", which you, in 1863, 
say, " we have not yet formed ". In the same dic- 
tionary there is also the verb " to progress " ; and 
it is given as a verb neuter. So that what you 
call " the present usage " is, clearly, the usage of 
the past ; the verb which you say is " the first of 
" its own family ", is nothing of the sort ; " to 
"aggress" and "to regress", which you say "we 
" have not yet formed ", are found in a dictionary 
published in 1755; and the neuter verb which 
you say " ive seem to want", we have had in use 
more than one hundred years ! Nor are the verbs 



5S THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

aggress and regress mere " dictionary words without 
" any authority for their use ". The former is used 
by Prior in his 'Ode to Queen Anne'-, and the 
latter is used by Sir Thomas Browne in his 
1 Vulgar Errors '* 

I will briefly notice a few of your numerous 
errors in syntax, &c, and then pass on to weightier 
matters. You speak of a possibility being il pre- 
" eluded in " the mind. You tell us of " a more 
" neat way of expressing what would be Mr. Moon's 
" sentence ". We express a meaning, or we write a 
sentence ; but we do not express a sentence. The 
word seems to be rather a pet of yours ; you speak 
of expressing a ivoman ! l Queer English ' would 
not have been an inappropriate title to your essays. 
Then we have "in respect of" for " with respect to" ;*f- 
and u an exception which I cannot well treat", 
instead of, " of which I cannot well treat " ; for it 
is evident from the context, that you w r ere not 

*For an account of the origin and gradual development of 
the words "progress", digress", "egress", "regress", and 
"transgress", see an interesting little book, called 'English 
'Boots', by A. J. Knapp, p. 135. 

t This error is treated of at some length in ' Lectures on the 
'English Language', by George P. Marsh, edited by Dr. 
William Smith, Classical Examiner at the University of 
London, pp. 467-9. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 59 

speaking of treating an exception, but of treating 
of an exception. 

The construction of some of your sentences is 
very objectionable : you say, " I have noticed the 
" word l party ' used for an individual, occurring in 
" Shakspeare " instead of, " I have noticed, in 
" Shakspeare, the word ' party ' used for an indi- 
" vidual ". But how is it that you call a man an 
individual ? In your first essay on the Queen s 
English you said, " It is certainly curious enough 
" that the same debasing of our language should 
" choose, in order to avoid the good honest Saxon 
" ' man \ two words, 'individual ' and 'party', one of 
" which expresses a man's unity, and the other 
" belongs to man associated " It certainly is 
curious ; but what appears to me to be more 
curious still, is that you, after writing that sentence, 
should yourself call a man " an individual " 

Again, I read, " The purpose is, to bring the fact 
" stated into prominence " : stated into prominence ! 
unquestionably, this should be, "to bring into 
" prominence the fact stated " 

Even when writing on the proper construction 
of a sentence, you construct your own sentence so 
^properly that it fails to convey your meaning. 
You say, " The natural order of constructing the 



60 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" sentence would be to relate what happened first, 
" and my surprise at it afterwards ". Your sentence 
does not enlighten us on your views of the proper 
order in which the facts should be related ; it tells 
us merely that we should relate what first 
happened, and your subsequent surprise at it. 
Not one word about the order of relation. We are 
to relate what " happened first ", but we are not 
told what to relate first. You should have said, 
"The natural order of constructing the sentence 
" would be to relate first what happened, and 
" afterwards my surprise at it ". 

Lastly, on this part of the subject; you say, 
" Mr. Moon quotes, with disapprobation, my words, 
" where I join together ' would have been broken 
" ' to pieces in a deep rut, or come to grief in a 
'"bottomless swamp'. He says this can only be 
" filled in thus, ' would have been ' " &c. I am 
quite sure that Mr. Moon never, after mentioning 
your sentence about " a deep rut " and " a bottomless 
" swamp " speaks of the sentence being a filled 
" in " ! That is the Dean of Canterbury's style ; 
he gives a sentence about eating and being full } 
and then speaks of the sentence being ''filled up "! 
He speaks of people mending their ways ; and, in 
the very next paragraph, talks about the " Queen's 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. CI 

"highway" and "by-roads" and "private roads". 
He speaks of things "without life" ; and imme- 
diately afterwards says he will introduce the body of 
— Ms essay. 

You will, doubtless, gain great notoriety by your 
strange essays on the Queen's English ; for, in 
consequence of your inaccuracies in them, it will 
become usual to describe bad language as "Deans 
" English ". By " bad language ", I do not mean 
rude language ; I say nothing about that. I mean 
that, in consequence of your ungrammatical sen- 
tences, it will be as common to call false English, 
" Dean's English", as it is to call base white metal, 
" German Silver" 

You say, "I have given a fair sample of the 
" instances of ambiguity which Mr. Moon cites out 
"of my essay". A fair sample! and yet you 
have made no mention of the instance of the 
eight-and-twenty nouns intervening between the 
pronoun "it" and the noun "habit", to which it 
refers. A fair sample ! and yet you have made 
no mention of the instance of ambiguity in the 
paragraph about " covetous and covetousness " ; a 
paragraph of fewer than ten lines, yet so ambiguously 
worded that you may ring as many changes on it 
as on a peal of bells ; only the melody would not 



62 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

be quite so sweet. However, if you do not object 
to a little bell-ringing, and if you will not think it 
sacrilegious of me to pull the ropes, I will just see 
what kind of a peal of bells it is that you have 
hung in your belfry, for I call the paragraph, " the 
" belfry ", and the pronouns, " the peal of bells ", and 
these I name after the gamut, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, 
so we shall not have any difficulty in counting the 
changes. You say, " While treating of the pronun- 
" ciation of those who minister in public, two 
" other words occur to me which are very commonly 

A 

" mangled by our clergy. One of these is 'covetous', 
" and its substantive ' covetousness \ I hope some 
" who read these lines will be induced to leave off 
" pronouncing them ' covetious', and 'covetiousness'. 

C D 

" I can assure them, that when they do thus call 

E F 

" them, one, at least, of their hearers has his appre- 

t( ciation of their teaching disturbed ". I fancy 
that many a one who reads these lines will have 
his appreciation of your teaching disturbed, as far 
as it relates to the Queen s English. But now for 
the changes which may be rung on these bells, as 
I have called them. The first of them, " A " may 
apply either to " words " or to " our clergy ". You 
i*ay, " our clergy. One of these is ' covetous ' ". I 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 



63 



am sorry to say that the general belief is, there are 
more than one; but perhaps you know one in 
particular. However, my remarks interrupt the 
bell-ringing, and we want to count the changes, so 
I will say no more, but will at once demonstrate 
that we can ring 10,240 changes on your peal of 
bells ! In other words, that your paragraph, of 
fewer than ten lines, is so ambiguously worded, 
that without any alteration of its grammar or of 
its syntax, it may be read in 10,240 different 
ways ! and only one of all that number will be the 
right way to express your meaning. 



The Pro- 
nouns . 


Nouns to which they may apply. 


2 


No. of Different Readings 




A 


these 


words, or clergy 




2 


B 


them 


words, clergy, readers, or lines 


4 


these 4 X by the above 2= 


8 


C 


them 


words, clergy, readers, or lines 


4 


these 4 X by the above 8= 


32 


D 


they 


words, clergy, readers, or lines 


4 


these 4 X by the above 32= 


128 


E 


them 


words, clergy, readers, or lines 


4 


these 4 X by the above 128= 


512 


F 


their 


words, clergy, readers, or hues 


4 


these 4 X by the above 512= 


2048 


G 


their 


f words, clergy, readers, lines, 
| or hearers .... 


5 


these 5 X by the above 2048=10,240 



This is indeed a valuable addition to the 
curiosities of literature : a treasure u presented 
" to the British Nation by the Very Rev. the 
"Dean of Canterbury ". No doubt it will be 



64 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

carefully preserved in the library of the British 
Museum. 

T have, now, a serious charge to prefer against 
you ; a charge to which I am reluctant to give a 
name. I will therefore simply state the facts, and 
leave the public to give to your proceedings in 
this matter, whatever name they may think most 
fitting. You say, on page 439, " I am reminded, 
" in writing this, of a criticism of Mr. Moon's on 
"my remarks that we have dropped 'thou' and 
" ' thee ' in our addresses to our fellow-men, and 
" reserved those words for our addresses in prayer 
" to Him who is the highest personality. It will 
" be hardly believed that he professes to set this 
" right by giving his readers and me the informa- 
" tion that ' these pronouns are very extensively 
" ' and profusely [I used no such word] used in 
" c poetry, even (!) when inanimate objects are 
" ' addressed ' : and thinks it worth while to quote 
" Coleridge's Address to Mont Blanc to prove his 
" point ! Eeally, might not the very obvious 
" notoriety of the fact he adduces have suggested 
" to him that it was totally irrelevant to the 
" matter I was treating of ? " Truly, this is the play 
of Hamlet with the Ghost left out hy special desire. 
Your object was to controvert what I had advanced 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 65 

against your essay ; and, I must say, that the 
means you have adopted to accomplish that end, 
are, to speak mildly, not much to your credit. I 
will prove what I say. The one vjord, against 
which the whole of my argument toas directed, you 
have, in reproducing your sentence, omitted from the 
quotation ; and then, of the mangled remains of 
the sentence, you exclaim, "It will be hardly 
" believed that he professes to set this right ". I 
professed nothing of the sort; you must know 
well, that my attack was against the one word 
which you have omitted. That this was the case, 
may be clearly seen on reference to my former 
letter,* where that word was, and still is, printed 
in italics, to draw special attention to it. You 
betray the weakness of your cause when you have 
recourse to such a suppression. 

Nor is the above instance of misquotation the 
only one in your essay. On page 429, you put 
into my mouth words which I never uttered; 
words which express a meaning totally at variance 
with what I said. You enclose the sentence in 
inverted commas to mark that it is a quotation ; 
and, as if that were not enough, you preface that 
sentence with this doubly emphatic remark ; " these 
* Pa-e 6. 



66 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" are his wprds, not mine ". You then make me 
say that I hope, "as I so strongly advocate our 
"following the Greeks in the pronunciation of 
" their proper names, I shall be consistent, and 
" never again, in reading the Lessons, call those 
" ancient cities Samaria and Philadelphia otherwise 
'* than Samaria and Philadelphia" I never had 
any such thought, nor did I ever express any such 
wish. These words are not mine ; nor are they 
any more like mine, than I am like you. The 
original sentence, of which the above is a perver- 
sion, will be found ,on page 27 of my former 
letter. 

But the part of my letter which you most fully 
notice in your reply, is that which treats of the 
arrangement of sentences; and, exactly as you 
suppress, in the instance I have given, the one 
important word on which the whole of the argu- 
ment turns ; so, in the matter of the arrangement 
of sentences, you suppress the one important 
paragraph w T hich qualifies all the rest ! You 
privately draw the teeth of the lion and then 
publicly show how valiantly you can put your 
head into his mouth ; thus you not only damage your 
own character for honesty of representation, but 
also insult the public whom you address, and who, 



THE DEAJSPS ENGLISH. 67 

you imagine, can be deceived by such childish 
performances. The following are the facts of the 
case. You say, after mentioning the authorities I 
had named, " The one rule of all others [!] which 
"he [Mr. Moon] cites from these authorities, 
"and which he believes me to have continually 
" violated, is this : that ' those parts of a sentence 
" ' which are most closely connected in their meaning, 
u ' should be as closely as possible connected in posi- 
" ' tion \ Or, as he afterwards quotes it from Dr. 
" Blair, l A capital rule in the arrangement of 
" ' sentences is, that the words or members most nearly 
" e related should be placed in the sentence as near to 
u 'each other as possible, so as to make their mutual 
" ( relation clearly appear ' 9 \ You then go on to 
say, " Now doubtless this rule is, in the main, and 
" for general guidance, a good and useful one ; 
" indeed, so plain to all, that it surely needed no 
" inculcating by these venerable writers. But 
" there are more things in the English language 
" than seem to have been dreamt of in their philo- 
" sophy. If this rule were uniformly applied, it 
" would break down the force and the living interest 
" of style in any English writer, and reduce his 
" matter to a dreary and dull monotony ; for it is 
" in exceptions to its application that almost all 

F 2 



68 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" vigour and character of style consist". Would 
any person — could any person — in reading the 
above extract from your reply to my letter, ever 
imagine that that letter contains such a paragraph 
as the following ? I quote from page 23, where I 
say, " In contending for the law of position, as laid 
" down by Lord Karnes, Dr. Campbell, and others, 
" I do so on the ground that the observance of 
" this law contributes to that most essential quality 
" in all writings — perspicuity ; and although I 
" would not, on any account, wish to see all sen- 
" tences constructed on one uniform plan, I maintain 
" that the law of position must never be violated 
" when such violation would in any way obscure the 
" meaning. Let your meaning still be obvious, and 
a you may vary your mode of expression as you 
"please, and your language will be the richer for the 
" variation. Let your meaning be obscure, and no 
" grace of diction, nor any music of a well-turned 
" period, will make amends to your readers for 
" their being liable to misunderstand you ". The 
existence of this paragraph, by which I carefully 
qualify the reader's acceptance of Dr. Blair's law 
of position as a universal rule, you utterly ignore ; 
and, with the most strange injustice, you charge 
me, through sentence after sentence, and column 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 69 

after column, of your tedious essay, with main- 
taining that all expressions should be worded on 
one certain uniform plan. Sentences so arranged 
are, you say, according to "Mr. Moon's rule". 
Sentences differing from that arrangement are, you 
say, a violation of "Mr. Moon's rule". With as 
much reasonableness might you leave out the word 
" not ", from the ninth commandment, and assert 
that it teaches, "Thou shalt bear false witness 
" against thy neighbour." 

This being your mode of conducting a contro- 
versy, I assure you that, were you not the Dean of 
Canterbury, I would not answer your remarks. 
Doubtless, before the publication of this, rejoinder, 
many of the readers of your second essay will 
have noticed the significant circumstance, that, of 
the various examples you give of sentences con- 
structed on what you are pleased to call "Mr. 
" Moon's rule ", but which, as I have shown, is 
only a part of " Mr. Moon's rule ", not one example 
is drawn from Mr. Mooris % own letter. 

You say, " But surely we have had enough of 
" Mr. Moon and his rules ". I do not doubt that 
you have ; but I must still detain you, as the 
Ancient Mariner detained the wedding-guest, until 
the tale is told. That being finished, I will let you 



70 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

go; and I trust that, like him, you will learn 
wisdom from the past : — 

" He went like one that hath been stunned, 

" And is of sense forlorn : 
" A sadder and a wiser man, 

" He rose the morrow morn" 

With respect to the date of the introduction of 
the possessive pronoun "its", which, you said, 
" never occurs in the English version of the Bible " ; 
and which, as I showed you, occurs in Leviticus, 
xxv. 5 ; you shelter yourself under the plea that 
you meant that the word never occurs in the 
" authorised edition ", known as " King James's 
" Bible ". But, as you did not say either " author- 
" ised edition " or " King James s Bible ", I am 
justified in saying that you have only yourself to 
blame for the consequences of having used language 
so unmistakably equivocal, as you certainly did 
when you said, " the English version of the Bible " 
and did not mean the English version now in every 
one's hands, but meant a particular edition pub- 
lished 252 years ago. Speaking of my correction 
of your error, you say, " What is to be regretted is, 
"that a gentleman who is setting another right 
" with such a high hand, should not have taken 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 71 

u the pains to examine the English version as it 
" really stands, before printing such a sentence as 
" that which I have quoted ". I will show you that 
my examination of the subject has been sufficiently 
deep to discover that yours must have been very 
superficial. Speaking of the word " its ", you say, 
" Its apparent occurrence in the place quoted is 
" simply due to the King's printers, who have 
" modernised the passage ". " Apparent occur- 
" rence " ! It is a real occurrence. Are we not to 
believe our eyes ? As for the " King's printers ", it 
was not they who introduced the word " its " into 
the English Bible. The first English Bible in 
which the w r ord is found, is one that was printed 
at a time when there was no King on the English 
throne, consequently wdien there were no "King's 
"printers": it was printed during the Common- 
wealth. Nor was that Bible printed by the 
"printers to the Parliament " Indeed, it is 
doubtful whether it was printed in this country. 
The word " its " first occurs in the English version 
of the Bible, in a spurious edition supposed to have 
been printed in Amsterdam. It may be distin- 
guished from the genuine edition* of the same 

* The genuine edition contains most gross errors ; for 
instance, in Rom. vi, 13, it is said, " Neither yield ye your 



72 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

date, 1653, by that very word "its", which is not 
found in the editions printed by the " printers to 
"the Parliament", or by the " King's printers" 
until many years afterwards. So when, in your 
endeavours to escape the charge of inaccuracy 
contained in my former letter, you say that the 
introduction of the word " its " into the English ■ 
version of the Bible, is owing to the "King's 
"printers", you, in trying to escape Scylla, are 
drawn into the whirlpool of Charybdis ! 

You speak of my demolishing your character 
for accuracy. I do not know what character you 
have for accuracy ; but this I know, that whenever 
I see a man sensitively jealous of any one point 
in particular of his character, I am not often 
wrong in taking his jealousy to be a sure sign of 
conscious weakness in that very point. What are 
the facts of the case with regard to yourself ? I 
have given several instances of your gross in- 
accuracy. I take no notice of unimportant mis- 

" members as instruments of righteousness", instead of " un- 
" righteousness " ; and, as if to confirm the above teaching, it 
is said, in 1 Cor. vi, 9, "the wirighteous shall inherit the 
** kingdom of God " ; instead of " shall not inherit ". Com- 
plaint was made to the Parliament ; and most of the copies 
now extant were cleared of the errors by the cancelling of 
leaves. The spurious edition is comparatively faultless. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 73 

quotations of the Scriptures and of my own 
sentences, though I could mention several of each 
occurring in your second essay ; but what are we 
to say of the following? It is, if intentional, 
which I cannot believe, the boldest instance of 
misquotation of Scripture, to suit a special pur- 
•pose, that I ever met with. I am sure it must 
have been unintentional ; but it is such an error, 
that to have fallen into it will, I hope, serve so to 
.convince you that you, like other mortals, are 
liable to err; that the remembrance of it will be 
a powerful restraint on your indignation, if others 
should venture, as I have done, to call in question 
your accuracy. The singular instance of misquo- 
tation to which I refer is the following. — Speaking 
of the adverb "only" and of its proper position 
in a sentence ; you say, " The adverb ' only \ in 
" many sentences, where strictly speaking it ought 
" to follow its verb, and to limit the objects of the 
" verb, is in good English placed before the verb. 
" Let us take some examples of this from the 
" great storehouse of good English, our authorised 
"version of the Scriptures. In Numbers xii, 2, 
" we read, ' Hath the Lord only spoken by Moses ? 
" 'hath He not spoken also by us V According to 
" some of my correspondents, and to Mr. Moon's 



74 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

"pamphlet (p. 12)*, this ought to be ' Hath the 
"'Lord spoken only by Moses V I venture to 
" prefer very much the words as they stand ". 
Now, strange as it may appear after your assertion, 
it is nevertheless a fact that the words, as you 
quote them, do not occur either in the authorised 
version, known as King James's Bible of 1611, or 
in our present version, or in any other version that 
I have ever seen ; and the words, in the order in 
which you say I and your other correspondents 
would have written them, do occur in every copy of 
the Scriptures to which I have referred ! So you 
very much prefer the words as they stand, do you ? 
Ha ! ha ! ha ! So do I. When next you write 
about the adverb "only", be sure you quote only 
the right passage of Scripture to suit your pur- 
pose ; and on no account be guilty of perverting 
the sacred text ; for these are not the days when 
the laity will accept without proof, where proof is 
possible, the statements of even the Dean of 
Canterbury. 

Before closing this letter, I have just one 
question to ask ; it is this : Why do you say I 
must have " a most abnormal elongation of the 
"auricular appendages" 1 In other words, Why 

* Page 14, in this Edition. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 75 

do you call me an ass ? I confess to a little 
curiosity in the matter ; therefore pardon me if I 
press the inquiry. Is it because the authorities I 
quoted are " venerable Scotchmen " and that there- 
fore you conclude I must be fond of thistles ? — 
No ? Well, I will guess again. Is it because I 
kicked at your authority ? — No ? Once more, then, 
Is it because, like Balaam's ass, I "forbad the 
" madness of the prophet " ? Still, No ? Then I 
must give it up, and leave to my readers the 
solving of the riddle ; and while perhaps there 
may be some who will come to the conclusion that 
the Dean of Canterbury calls me an ass because I 
have been guilty of braying at him ; there are 
others, I know, who will laughingly say that the 
braying has been of that kind mentioned in 
Prov. xxvii, 22. 

I am, Eev. Sir, 
Your most obedient Servant, 

G. WASHINGTON MOON. 



76 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

Note. — The Dean of Canterbury having pub- 
lished a letter exonerating himself from the charge 
of discourtesy, the following appeared in 'The 
' Patriot 9 newspaper, in answer to that letter. 



THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PATRIOT. 






Sir, — Permit me to say, in reference to the letter 
from the Dean of Canterbury which yon published in 
the last number of ' The Patriot \ that I heartily join 
you in your regret that any personalities should have 
intruded into this discussion on the Queen's English, 
and I gladly welcome from the Dean any explanation 
which exonerates him from the charge of discourtesy. 
But I must say, in justification of my having made 
those condemning remarks which called forth the Dean's 
letter, that I was not alone in my interpretation of his 
language. Those who had the privilege of hearing the 
Dean deliver his ' Plea ', when there were all the accom- 
panying advantages of emphasis and gesture to assist 
the hearers to a right understanding of the speaker's 
meaning, understood the epithets which he employed to 
be intended for me ; and, as such, generally condemned 
them. My authority is * The South-Eastern Gazette ', of 
May 19th, which published a report of the meeting. 

The Dean states, in his explanatory letter, that he 
intended the objectionable epithets not for me, but for 
the hypothetical reader supposed by me to be capable of 
the misapprehensions I had adduced. It happens, 



TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 77 

rather unfortunately for the Dean's explanation, that I 
had not spoken of any hypothetical reader. Litera 
scripta manet, — judge for yourself. I spoke not of what 
the Dean's faulty language might suggest to some 
imaginary reader, but of what it did suggest ; and to 
whom, but to me ? The hypothetical reader is entirely 
a creation of the Dean's. However, as he says he 
intended the epithets for this said reader, that is suf- 
ficient. I am quite willing to help the Dean to put the 
saddle on this imaginary " ass " ; and I think the Dean 
cannot do better than set the imaginary " idiot " on the 
said ass's back, and then probably the one will gallop 
away with the other, and we may never hear anything 
more of either of them. 

I am, Sir, 

Yours most respectfully, 

G. WASHINGTON MOON. 






" Instead of always fixing our thoughts upon the 
" points in which our literature and our intellectual life 
" generally are strong, we should, from time to time, fix 
" them upon those in which they are weak, and so learn 
" to perceive clearly what we have to amend." — ' Essays 
1 in Criticism \ p. 55. — Matthew Arnold. 






THE DEAFS ENGLISH. 



CEITICISM No. III. 

Eev. Sir, 

It gives me great pleasure to withdraw the 
charge of discourtesy contained in my former 
letter to you. I cordially accept the explanation 
you have given ; and though I cannot quite recon- 
cile your statements with all the facts of the case, 
I feel sure that the discrepancy is merely apparent, 
not real ; and that you are sincere in saying you 
did not intend to apply to me those epithets of 
which I complained. But allow me to remark 
that for whomsoever they were intended, they are 
objectionable. Such figures of speech neither add 
weight to arguments, nor give dignity to language ; 
they serve only to illustrate how easy it is for a 
teacher of others to disregard his own lessons, and 



80 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 

become oblivious of the fact that all teaching, like 
all charity, should begin at home. You say that 
the obnoxious epithets were intended for some 
hypothetical person ; be pleased to receive my 
remarks on the said epithets as intended for some 
hypothetical Dean. 

In the collected edition of your essays you 
have called me your friend. Let me then, as a 
friend, advise you never again to apply to an 
opponent, whether real or imaginary, such expres- 
sions as " idiot " and " ass " ; lest some of your 
reacjers, who read also what you are pleased to 
call your opponent's (< caustic remarks", (lunar- 
caustic, if you like,) should amuse themselves by 
imagining they see a parallelism between your 
case and the case of the old prophet of Bethel, as 
that was understood by some who heard a clergy- 
man, not remarkable for correctness of emphasis, 
thus read a portion of the old prophet's history ; — 
"He spake to his sons, saying, 'Saddle me the 
" ' ass '. And they saddled him ". 1 Kings xiii, 27. 

Actuated by a sincere love for the language 
which, it seems to me, you are injuring by precept 
and by example, I resume my criticisms on your 
essays. You constitute yourself a teacher of the 
Queen's English. "Were it not so, I should con- 



TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 31 

sider any strictures on your language as simply 
impertinent; but as you have judged it to be 
right to lecture the public on certain improprieties 
of expression which have crept into common use ; 
it cannot be out of place for one of the public, 
whom you address, to step forward on behalf of 
himself and his companions, to test your fitness 
for the office you have assumed ; especially if he 
confine his test to an examination of the language 
used in those very lectures themselves. 

The only deviation which I have made from 
that course is in my second letter. There, noticing 
your remarks concerning the practice of spelling 
without the "u" such words as "honour" and 
"favour" , I quote from your 'Poems' the words 
so spelt, and add some prefatory remarks of yours 
concerning them. In your third essay you speak 
of the above circumstance, and you inform me 
that the words "honor" and "favor", which I 
quoted from your ' Poems ', were from that part of 
the volume which was printed in America, and 
that it was against such American spelling that 
you protested in your preface. 

Allow me to say, in explanation of my having 
unconsciously quoted from the American part of 
the volume, that, as the preface stated that the 

G 



82 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

poems which you added to the American edition 
were the products of "later years", it was not 
unnatural for me to believe they were those 
headed " Eecent Poems " : and it was from them 
that my quotations were made. Besides, you call 
the American part of the volume the "nucleus" 
of the edition: therefore, if I had taken my 
examples of orthography from the commencement 
as well as from the end of the volume, I should 
have been justified in doing so ; for, surely, a 
" nucleus " is that around which other matter is 
collected. You do indeed make a strange use of 
the word when you call 400 pages of a volume of 
poems the "nucleus", and leave only 29 pages at 
the end, to come under the description of " con- 
globated matter " ! However, even in those few 
pages of English printing, which, according to 
your own confession, were under your control, I 
find the word honour spelt " honor ", and the word 
odours spelt " odors ". The charge, therefore, 
stands as it did ; and your explanation has served 
only to draw more scrutinizing attention to an 
inconsistency which otherwise might have passed 
almost unnoticed. 

So you really defend your ungrammatical sen- 
tence, " If with your inferiors speak no coarser 



TEE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 83 

" than usual ; if with your superiors, no finer " ; 
and you not only defend it, as allowable, but 
actually maintain that it is " strictly correct " ; the 
ground of your assertion being that you have " no 
" choice " open to you between saying " speak no 
" coarser ", and " speak no more coarsely " ; and 
you object to the latter expression because you 
believe it would be ambiguous, owing to the term 
" no more " being capable of meaning " never again \ 
Was, then, the sentence, with which I found fault, 
simply "Speak no coarser " ? You know it was not. 
Why, then, do you, by omitting the latter part of 
the sentence, try to make it appear that it was ? 
Be assured that even if you could by such means 
prove to the careless reader that you were correct, 
or that, at least, you had some show of reason for 
your use of the expression which I condemned ; 
you would prove it at a cost of character which 
would make all good men sigh with regret. 

But I will not again charge you with intentional 
inaccuracy. I prefer to impale you on the other 
horn of the dilemma by first admitting that your 
remarks were intended to apply to the whole of the 
sentence, and then showing the absurdity of your 
reasoning. 

Are you not aware that a weak defence is a 

G 2 



84 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

strong admission ? It is true that " no more " 
sometimes signifies " never again " ; but you well 
know that it never can have that signification 
when it is followed by " than". The phrase " speak 
" no more coarsely " may, indeed, mean " speak 
" never again coarsely " ; but u speak no more 
" coarsely than usual " could never be understood 
as " speak never again coarsely than usual " ; for, 
such a sentence would be without meaning. 
Besides, if you feared that your sentence would be 
ambiguous with the expression "no more than", 
why did you use that expression in other parts of 
your essays ? For instance, you say, " The Queen 
" is no more the proprietor of the English language 
" than you or I ". A certain word, you say, a ought 
" no more to be spelt ( diocess ', than cheese ought 
" to be spelt ' chess \" Where were your scruples 
about "no more" and "never again", when you 
wrote these sentences ? As for your having no 
choice between saying " speak no coarser than 
" usual " and saying " speak no more coarsely than 
"usual"; you certainly had not well considered 
the subject when you made that remark ; for, 
neither of the expressions is the best that might 
have been used ; indeed, the former is grossly un- 
grammatical ; and, as for the latter, to make it 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 85 

"right to a t", you must change the " no " into 
11 not"; and we shall then have the sentence 
correct, — " If with your inferiors speak not more 
"coarsely than usual"; or, "do not speak more 
" coarsely than usual " 

You tell us that " than n governs an accusative 
case. If that be so, why did you, in the sentence 
which I just now quoted, write, — "The Queen is 
" no more the proprietor of the English language 
" than you or I" ? You are inconsistent. Your 
precepts and your practice do not agree. According 
to your own rule you should have said "than you 
" or me " If " than " governs an accusative, the 
translators of the Scriptures, too, were wrong in 
making Solomon say, in Eccles. ii. 25, " Who can 
"eat more than I"? They should have made 
him say, " Who can eat more than me 1 " but even 
a child would tell you that such an expression 
would be absurd, except under the supposition 
that Solomon was the king of the Cannibal 
Islands ! It is not the circumstance that the 
pronoun is preceded by "than", that determines 
whether the pronoun is to be in the nominative or 
in the accusative case. It is the meaning which 
the writer intends to convey, that determines 
in which case the pronoun must be. I have given 



86 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

you an example of the proper use of "than I" ; 
here is an instance of the proper use of " than me " 
Our Saviour says, in Matt. x. 37, " He that 
"loveth father or mother more than me is not 
" worthy of me ". The meaning is obvious ; but 
had our Saviour said " He that loveth father or 
"mother more than I", his words would have 
suggested the possibility of man's love exceeding 
Christ's ! " Than " has nothing whatever to do 
with determining the case of the pronoun. 

In your first ' Plea for the Queens English', you 
laid it down as a rule that neuter verbs should not 
be qualified by adverbs, but by adjectives ; i.e. we 
ought not to say " how nice/?/ she looks " but " how 
" nice she looks " ; because, the verb " to look ", as 
here used, is a neuter verb, one not indicating an 
action, but merely a quality, or a state. Very well ; 
but, unfortunately, your practice mars the good 
which otherwise might be done by your precept ; 
for, "to appear" is as much a neuter verb as "to 
" look " used as above ; in fact it is but another 
form of expression for the same meaning ; and yet, 
after ridiculing " youug ladies fresh from school ", 
for saying " how nicely she looks " ; you yourself 
say that the account to be given of a certain inac- 
curacy " appears still more plainly " from the fact 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 87 

that, &c., &c. If I may be allowed to make a 
somewhat questionable pun, I will say that it 
appeal's to me more and more plain that you never 
more completely missed your vocation than when 
you began lecturing " boarding-school misses " on 
the Queen's English. 

While remarking on your wrong use of adverbs, 
I may notice that you say " our Lord's own use so 
" frequent/?/ of the term ". His use of a particular 
term may be said to have been frequent ; but it 
cannot be said to have been iC frequently y \ Trans- 
pose the words in your sentence and you will see 
this at once. " Our Lord's own so frequently use of 
*'the term"! Surely no boarding-school miss 
would ever write thus. It is the verb that requires 
the adverb ; the noun requires the adjective. He 
used the term frequently ; but his use of it was 
frequent 

In my former letter I advised you, when next 
you wrote about the adverb " only ", to quote only 
the right passage of Scripture to suit your purpose. 
I little imagined that I should catch you with a 
hook so barbed with sarcasm ; but you swallowed 
the bait, and I have fairly caught you. You have 
taken my words in their literal signification ; and, 
having withdrawn from your essay the misquoted 



88 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

passage from the book of Numbers, which certainly 
did not suit your purpose, have substituted the 
fourth verse of Psalm lxii. Is it, then, allow- 
able to select from the Scriptures a particular 
passage favouring a theory of your own, and not to 
tell your pupils that the language in the verses 
immediately before and after that passage is 
opposed to the lessons you deduce from it ? I 
think not; and I cannot refrain from expressing 
surprise at your adopting such a course. Besides, 
how could you hope to succeed when every 
English layman of the present day follows the 
example of the noble Bereans of old and searches 
the Scriptures for himself ? 

The question between us was concerning the 
position which the adverb "only" should occupy in a 
sentence. I affirmed that it should be as near as 
possible to the words it is intended to qualify ; and 
you, that it may with propriety be placed at a 
distance from them. In support of your opinion, 
you brought forward a passage from what you call 
" that storehouse of good English, the authorised 
"version of the Scriptures". I proved that you 
had grossly misquoted the passage, and that the 
■words were not to be found in the order in which 
you had written them. With respect to the sub- 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 83 

stituted passage from Psalm lxii, I suppose I shall 
not be communicating information that is quite 
new to you, if I mention that in the first six 
verses of the psalm the adverb "■ only " occurs four 
times ; and, except in the solitary verse which you 
quote, it is in each instance joined to the words 
that it is intended to qualify. In the fifth verse 
we read u Wait thou only upon God ; " and in the 
second verse and, again, in the sixth, " He only is 
" my rock and my salvation." 

As for the Scriptures' being a " storehouse of 
" good English " allow me to tell you that there 
are tares among the wheat. The Bible is no more 
a storehouse of good English than it is a storehouse 
of scientific truth. It abounds with errors in 
grammar and in composition. For an example of 
these, look at Deut. xvii. 5 ; but read part of the 
previous verse : — [If] " it be true, and the thing 
" certain, that such abomination is wrought in 
" Israel : Then shalt thou bring forth that man or 
" that woman which have committed that wicked 
u thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that 
" woman, and shalt stone them with stones till 
" they die ". In the first place, the conjunction 
"or" being disjunctive, the nominative to the verb 
" committed" is in the singular number ; and there- 



90 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

lore, as the verb is not in the subjunctive mood, 
the " have " should be " has ", for a verb should 
agree with its nominative. Secondly, the phrase 
" unto thy gates " is quite out of place; the meaning 
intended to be conveyed, is not "committed that 
(i wicked thing, unto thy gates " ; but, " thou shalt 
" bring forth unto thy gates that man or that woman'. 
Thirdly, " that woman which " should be " that 
" tuoman ivho ". In modern English " which " is ap- 
plied to irrational animals, to things without life, and 
to infants; and either "who" or "that" is more appro- 
priate when speaking of persons. We should say 
either " the tuoman who ", or " the woman that "; not 
" the woman which " Fourthly, " then shalt thou 
" bring forth that man or that woman, .... and 
" shalt stone them ". Had it been " that man and 
" that woman " it would have been quite right to 
use the plural pronoun ; but as the verse stands, 
" them " is certainly improper. Fifthly and lastly, 
" till they die " ; clearly the verse is speaking of 
only one person being stoned, either a man or a 
woman, how, then, can we say "till they die"? 
Here are five errors in four lines. So much for 
your "storehouse of good English ". Unquestionably 
there are, in the Bible, passages which for sim- 
plicity, for grandeur, for soul-stirring pathos, for 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 91 

richness of poetic imagery, for climax and for 
antithesis, are unsurpassed in the language ; and, 
in praise of such passages, I would heartily join 
you ; but, when you wish scholars to accept the 
Bible as a text-book by which grammatical dispu- 
tations may be settled, we part company at once. 

In a former letter I called attention to your 
injudicious use of the preposition "from" ; and I 
pointed out the necessity for guarding against 
suggesting any idea which has no real connexion 
with the matter of which you may be speaking. 
I gave, as an example of this kind of fault, your 
sentence, " Sometimes the editors of our papers 
" fall, from their ignorance, into absurd mistakes ". 
Here the preposition "Jrom", immediately following 
the verb "fall", suggests the absurd idea of 
editors falling from their ignorance. In your third 
essay you repeat the fault, and speak of " archi- 
" tectural transition, from the venerable front of an 
" ancient cathedral ". The sentence runs thus, 
" A smooth front of stucco may be a comely thing 
"for those that like it, but very few sensible men 
" will like it, if they know that in laying it on, we 
" are proposing to obliterate the roughnesses, ami 
" mixture of styles, and traces of architectural 
" transition, from the venerable front of an ancient 



92 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 

" cathedral " Here, if you perceived that the mere 
juxtaposition of the words "transition" and "from" 
was suggestive of an idea which you by no means 
intended to convey, you should have separated the 
words by transposing the last clause of the sentence. 
It might have been done thus ; — " proposing to 
" obliterate, from the venerable front of an ancient 
" cathedral, the roughness, and mixture of styles, 
a and traces of architectural transition." You 
may say these are trifles; but, remember, "it is 
" by attention to trifles that perfection is attained ; 
" and, perfection is no trifle." Besides, to quote 
your own words, " An error may be, in an ordinary 
" person, a trifle ; but when a teacher makes it, it 
" is no longer a trifle." 

In your remarks on " so ", used in connection 
with "as", you say "'so' cannot be used in the 
" affirmative proposition, nor ' as ' in the negative ". 
If this be correct, why do you yourself use " as " 
in the negative ? You say " ' its ' was never used 
" in the early periods of our language, nor, indeed, 
" as late down as Elizabeth/' 

But I suppose it is almost useless for me to 
address you on the subject of the various niceties 
of arrangement which require to be attended to in 
the construction of sentences. You seem to care 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 93 

for none of these things. Yet, believe me, such 
matters, unimportant as they may appear, contri- 
bute in a far greater degree than you imagine, to 
make up the sum of the difference between a style 
of composition which is ambiguous and inelegant ; 
and one which is perspicuous and chastely correct. 

You evidently entertain some fear lest the study 
of the rules of composition should cramp the 
expression of the thoughts ! Never was there a 
more groundless apprehension : and, in proportion 
as you are successful in disseminating such notions, 
do you inflict on our language the most serious 
injury. Fortunately for that language, the poison 
of your teaching carries with it its own antidote. 
They who read your essays on the Queen's English 
cannot fail to notice the significant fact, that he who 
is thus strongly advocating the principle that the 
rules of composition serve no other purpose than 
to " cramp the expression of his thoughts ", does 
not exhibit that fluency and gracefulness of diction 
which, if his view of the matter were correct, 
would necessarily be displayed in his own compo- 
sitions. 

A reviewer in ' The Nonconformist ' writes as 
follows : — " Away with all needless and artificial 
" rules, say we, indeed — as energetically as the 



94 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 

" most energetic. But the elementary and natural 
" laws of a language fetter only the impatient or 
" the unskilful ; and in the living freedom with 
" which genius obeys those laws, is its strength and 
" mastery shown." 

What was Milton's opinion on this subject ? 
Was he opposed to rules and maxims ? Did he 
think they served no other purpose than to "cramp 
" the expression of the thoughts " ? Quite the 
contrary. 

In the year 1638, Milton, in a Latin letter 
addressed to an Italian scholar who was then 
preparing a work on the grammar of his native 
tongue, wrote as follows : " Whoever in a state 
" knows how to form wisely the manners of men 
" and to rule them at home and in war by excellent 
" institutes, him in the first place, above others, I 
t( should esteem worthy of all honour ; but next to 
" him the man who strives to establish in maxims 
" and rules the method and habit of speaking and 
" writing derived from a good age of the nation, and, 
" as it were, to fortify the same round with a kind of 
" wall, the daring to overleap which, a law, only 
" short of that of Romulus, should be used to prevent. 
" Should we choose to compare the two in respect 
" to utility, it is the former only that can make the 






TRE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 93 

11 social existence of the citizens just and holy ; but 
" it is the latter that makes it splendid and beauti- 
" ful, which is the next thing to be desired. The 
" one, as I believe, supplies a noble courage • and 
"intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the 
" territory ; the other takes to himself the task of 
" extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned 
" detective police of ears and a light infantry of 
" good authors, that barbarism which makes large 
" inroads upon the minds of men, and is a des- 
" tructive intestine enemy to genius. Nor is it to 
" be considered of small importance what language, 
" pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their 
" customary degree of propriety in speaking it — a 
" matter which oftener than once was the salvation 
" of Athens : nay, as it is Plato's opinion that by a 
" change in the manner and habit of dress serious' 
" commotions and mutations are portended in a 
" commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather 
" believe that the fall of that city and its low 
" and obscure condition followed on the general 
" vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech ; for, 
" let the words of a country be in part unhandsome 
" and offensive in themselves, in part debased by 
a wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they 
" declare but, by no slight indication, that the 



96 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly- 
a yawning race, with minds already long prepared 
" for any amount of servility ? On the other hand, 
" we have never heard that any empire, any state, 
" did not flourish in at least a middling degree as 
" long as its own liking and care for its language 
" lasted." 

So far John Milton — the noble advocate of law 
and rule, though in virtue of the transcendency of 
his genius he might have claimed to be above all 
rules. Now let us have a specimen of your 
English, — the English of the Dean of Canterbury, 
who, avowedly, disregards all rules, fearing they 
would " cramp the expression of Ms thoughts " / 

The following example is taken from your third 
essay. I read, " l this ' and ' these ' refer to persons 
" and things present, or under immediate consider- 
a ation ; ' that ' and ' those ' to persons and things 
" not present nor under immediate consideration ; 
" or, if either of these, one degree further removed, 
" than the others of which are used 'this' and 'these'". 
What can be the meaning of this last clause ? The 
reader can only wonder and guess. It utterly 
defies all power of analysis, and really makes one 
uncomfortable to read it. It forcibly recalls the 
following anecdote told of Douglas Jerrold. ll On 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH, 97 

"recovering from a severe illness, Browning's 
"'Sordello' was put into his Lands. Line after 
" line, page after page, he read, but no consecutive 
" idea could he get from the mystic production. 
" Mrs. Jerrold was out, and he had no one to whom 
" to appeal. The thought struck him that he had 
" lost his reason during his illness, and that he was 
" so imbecile he did not know it. A perspiration 
" burst from his brow, and he sat silent and 
"thoughtful. As soon as his wife returned, he 
"thrust the mysterious volume into her hands, 
91 crying out, ' Eead this, my dear ! ' After several 
" attempts to make any sense out of the first page 
" or so, she gave back the book, saying, ' Bother 
u l the gibberish ! I don't understand a word of 
"'it'. ' Thank Heaven', cried Jerrold, 'then I 
" ' am not an idiot ! ' " 

Here is another specimen from your essay ; I 
give the entire sentence, which, closing with a 
period, should be complete in its sense. You say, 
" The next thing I shall mention, not for its own 
"sake, but as a specimen of the kind of criticism 
" which I am often meeting with, and instructive 
"to those who wish to be critics of other men's 
" language." It was not until I had long and 
hopelessly pondered over your sentence, that I 

H 



98 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

discovered what it was you intended to say, and 
what was the reason of my not instantly catching 
your meaning. I find that the first clause in your 
sentence is inverted, and that the punctuation 
necessary to mark the inversion is incorrect, or 
rather, is altogether omitted; hence, I read the 
sentence thus, — " The next thing [which] I shall 
" mention, not for its own sake, but as a specimen/' 
&c. ; whereas your meaning was, — " The next 
" thing [,] I shall mention, not for its own sake, 
" but as a specimen," &c. ; or, putting the words 
in their natural order, " I shall mention the next 
" thing, not for its own sake, but as a specimen/' &c. 
Your hobby of leaving out commas carries you 
too far; your readers cannot follow you: and if 
you are going to set aside the rules of punctuation 
as well as those of grammar, you must give us 
something better than this to convince us of the 
advantage to be gained by adopting such a course. 
Among other curious matters to be found in 
your essays, is the somewhat startling information 
that the expressions "I ain't certain", "I ain't 
" going " are not un frequently used by " educated 
" persons " ! I suppose you mean educated at 
college, where the study of English is altogether 
ignored; but of that, more by-and-by. In the 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 99 

mean time I pass on to the next sentence in your 
essay. Having told us that the above expressions 
are not unfrequently used by " educated persons " ; 
you go on to say, " The main objection to them is, 
" that they are proscribed by usage ; but exception 
" may also be taken to them on their own account". 
So I should think, if they ivill use such ex- 
pressions as " I ain't certain " " I ain't going ". 

I see you still say "treated", rather than "treated 
" of" ; e.g. " a matter treated in my former paper ". 
On a previous occasion I spoke of this error ; but I 
suppose, as you still express yourself in the same 
way, you consider the terms synonymous ; but 
they certainly are not. To treat is one thing; to 
treat of is another ; and it is the latter expression 
that would convey your meaning. The following 
sentence will exhibit the difference between the 
two terms : — "A matter treated of in my former 
" paper was treated by you with indifference." 

One of the defects noticeable in your essays, is 
that of making your expressions too elliptical. 
Brevity is undoubtedly an excellent quality in 
writing ; but brevity should always be subordinate 
to perspicuity. This has not been attended to in 
the following sentence, which, singularly enough, 
happens to be upon the very subject of ellipsis 

H 2 



100 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

itself. You say, " Some languages are more ellip- 
" tical than others ; that is, the habits of thought 
" of some nations will bear the omission of certain 
u members of a sentence better than the habits of 
" thought of other nations " \ivill\ Do you not 
perceive that but for the little word " will ", which 
I have added to your sentence, the statement would 
be, that " the habits of thought of some nations 
" will bear the omission of certain members of a 
" sentence better than [they will bear] the habits 
" of thought of other nations " ? — a truth which no 
one will be found to deny ; but, at the same time, 
a truth which you did not mean to affirm. 

What ! Not yet over that "pons asinorum" of 
juvenile writers, the "construction louche"! You 
were there when I wrote to you my first letter ; 
and you are there still. This ought not to be; 
for, the effect of this error is so ridiculous, and the 
error itself may be so easily avoided. You say, 
" Though some of the European rulers may be 
" females, when spoken of altogether, they may be 
" correctly classified under the denomination 
ui kings '." In this sentence, the clause which I 
have put in italics has, what our Gallic neigh- 
bours designate, "a squinting construction", it 
looks two ways at once; that is, it may be 



THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 101 

construed as relating either to the words which pre- 
cede, or to those which follow. Your former error 
of this sort was in the omission of a comma ; this 
time you have erred by the insertion of a comma, 
and in each case a like result is produced. Had 
there been no comma after the word " altogether ", 
the ambiguity would have been avoided, because 
the words in italics would then have formed part 
of the last clause of the sentence : but as the 
italicised clause is isolated by commas, the sen- 
tence is as perfect a specimen of this error as ever 
could have been given. Absurd as would be the 
sentence, its construction is such, that we may 
understand you to say, " Some of the European 
" rulers may be females, when spoken of alto- 
" gether " ; or we may understand you to say, 
" when spoken of altogether, they may be correctly 
" classified under the denomination ' kings ' " ; but, 
even in this last clause, it is evident that you say 
one thing and mean another. The context shows 
that what you meant, was, " they may correctly be 
" classified ", not " they may be correctly classified " 
Slight as is the apparent difference here, the real 
difference is very great. If I say, " they may be 
" correctly classified ", my words mean that the 
classification may be made in a correct manner ; 



102 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

but if I say, " they may correctly he classified ", the 
meaning is, that it is correct to classify them. In 
the first example, the adverb qualifies the past 
participle " classified " ; in the second, it qualifies 
the passive verb to " be classified " ; or, in other 
words, the adverb in the former instance describes 
the thing as being properly done ; and, in the 
latter instance, as being a thing proper to do. 

One word more before we finish with this 
strange sentence of yours. On page 59 I had to 
ask you why, when speaking of a man, you used 
the slang expression, " an individual ". I have 
here, to ask you a question which is still graver. 
Why, when speaking of women, and one of those 
the highest lady in the land, do you apply to them 
the most debasing of all slang expressions ? You 
speak of " some of the European rulers ", [there are 
but two to whom your words can refer ; — our own 
Sovereign Lady, and the Queen of Spain,] and you 
describe them by an epithet which cannot appro- 
priately be used except concerning the sex of 
animals! — they are, you tell us, — "females" ! I 
am sure that all who desire your welfare will join 
me in hoping that Her Majesty will not see your 
hook. It is but too evident that in condemning 
these slang phrases, as you do in your 'Queen's 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 103 

1 English \ page 246, you are echoing the senti- 
ments of some other writer, rather than expressing 
your own abhorrence of slang. I shall be glad it 
you are able to inform me that I am mistaken in 
this particular; and that you have not been 
quoting, but have been giving us original matter. 

Eeverting to the error occasioned by a comma 
in the former part of your sentence, I may give, 
as another example of the importance of correct 
punctuation, an extract from a letter in * The 
1 Times' of June 19th, 1863 ; there, simply by the 
placing of the smallest point, a comma, before, 
instead of after, one of the smallest words in the 
language, the word " on ", the whole meaning of 
| the sentence is entirely altered, and it is made to 
express something so horrible that the reader 
shudders at the mere suggestion oF it. 

The letter is on the American war, and the 
writer says, "The loss of life w r ill hardly fall short 
" of a quarter of a million ; and how many more 
"were better with the dead than doomed to crawl, 
"on the mutilated victims of this great national 
"crime!" He meant to say, — "than doomed to 
" crawl on, the mutilated victims of this great 
" national crime." 

While pointing out this solitary error, 1 emphati- 



104 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 

cally protest against the injustice of your remarks 
concerning the general inaccuracy of the composi- 
tion of ' The Times.' I hold that, to those per- 
sons who are desirous of perfecting themselves 
in the English language, no better course of study 
can be recommended than the constant perusal of the 
leading articles in our principal daily paper. That 
faults are to be found even there, occasionally, must 
be admitted ; but they are very few. The style, 
varying according to the subject under considera- 
tion, is familiar without being coarse, and dignified 
without being ostentatious. The language is 
powerful, yet is never marred by invectives ; 
trenchant, yet never at the sacrifice of courtesy. 
Free alike from vulgarism and slovenliness on 
the one hand, and from formality and pedantry on 
the other, the student may safely take it as a 
model on which to form a style that will enable 
him to express his thoughts with grace, precision, 
and persuasiveness. 

But I must hasten to the conclusion of my 
letter. You say, " The derivation of the word, as 
" well as the usage of the great majority of 
" English writers, fix the spelling the other way ", 
i.e. This (as well as that) fix it! Excuse me, 
but I must ask why you write thus, even though 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 105 

by putting the question, I put you " in a fix " to 
answer it. 

You speak of " the final ' u ' in tenour ", and 
" the final ' s ' in months ". You might just as 
reasonably speak of the final " a " in the alphabet. 

These errors are so gross that I cannot forbear 
reproving you in your own words. "Surely it is 
"an evil J or a people to he daily accustomed to read 
" English expressed thus obscurely and ungrammati- 
" cally : it tends to confuse thought, and to deprive 
" language of its proper force, and by this means to 
" degrade us as a nation in the rank of thinkers and 
" speakers." 

In your second essay you are loud in praise of 
variety in composition ; and variety enough you 
undoubtedly have given us ; but, unfortunately, 
the variety is not of that description which, in 
our school days, writing-masters made us describe 
in our copy-books as " charming ". We have 
found, in your Essays on the Queens English, 
errors in the use of pronouns ; errors in the use of 
nouns, both substantive and adjective ; errors in 
the use of verbs and of adverbs ; and errors in the 
use of prepositions. There are errors in composi- 
tion, and errors in punctuation ; errors of ellipsis, 
and errors of redundancy; specimens of ambiguity, 



108 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

and specimens of squinting constructions ; speci- 
mens of slang, and specimens of misquotation of an 
opponent's words ; and, worst of all, a specimen of 
a misquotation of Scripture. Add to this the 
following specimens of tautology and tautophony, 
and the list will, I think, be complete. 

As you have introduced into your essays the 
short preface to your Poems, that preface becomes 
fairly amenable to criticism, and I remark that in 
it you say, " This will account for a few specimens 
" of Transatlantic orthography for which the 
" author must not be accounted responsible ". 

The following is from your third essay : — " An 
" officer whose duty it is to keep a counter-roll, or 
" check on the accounts of others. It seems also 
" clear, from this account of the word, that it 
" ought not," &c. 

Then I read, " One word on ' this ' and i that ', 
" as we pass onward ". 

" At last we abated the nuisance by enacting, 
'- that in future the debatable first syllable should 
u be dropped ". 

" Thought and speech have ever been freer in 
"England than in other countries. From these 
"and other circumstances, the English language 
" has become more idiomatic than most others ". 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 107 

" The sentences which I have quoted are but a 
"few out of the countless instances in our best 
" writers, and in their most chaste and beautiful 
"passages, in which this usage occurs. On ex- 
a amining into it, we find " — &c, &c. 

Enough ! It was my intention to say a few 
words of caution to students of the Queen's 
English, on your advice to them to disregard the 
rules of grammarians and be guided by custom 
and common sense ; but, on second thoughts, I am 
sure that any further remarks must be unnecessary ; 
fur if your plan cannot do more for its teacher, 
there need be no fear that it will be followed by 
any sagacious pupil. 

I had fully intended to speak also on the neces- 
sity of a more thorough study of English at our 
Universities; but any remarks on that, will 
likewise be considered needless ; for, your own 
English is, itself, a volume on the subject. 

Nevertheless, read what appeared in the 'Comhill 
' Magazine' for May, 1861 : — " In Greek and Latin, 
11 no doubt, the clergy have advanced as fast as their 
" age, or faster. University men now write Greek 
" Iambics, as every one knows, rather better than 
" Sophocles, and would no more think of violating 
" the Pause than of violating an oath. A good 



108 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

" proportion of them are also perfectly at home in 
u the calculation of perihelions, nodes, mean 
" motions, and other interesting things of the same 
"kind, which it is unnecessary to specify more 
" particularly. So far the clergy are at least on a 
" level with their age. But this is all that can be 
" said. When we come to their mother-tongue a 
" different story is to he told. Their English — the 
" English of their sermons — is nearly where it was 
" a hundred years ago. The author of ' Twenty 
" 'years in the Church'' makes the driver of a coach 
" remark to his hero, that young gentlemen from 
" college preparing to take orders appear to have 
" learned everything except their own language. 
" And so they have. Exceptions, of course, there 
" are, many and bright ; but in the main the charge 
"is true. The things in which, compared with 
" former ages, they excel so conspicuously, are the 
11 very things which have least concern with their 
" special calling. The course of their progress has 
" reversed the course of charity ; — it began abroad, 
" and has never yet reached home/' 

There are, however, a few English scholars who 
are patriotically fighting under the banner of their 
own country against the supremacy of foreign 
languages in our schools and our colleges ; and fore- 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 109 

most among that few is the English lecturer at 
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, — the Eev. Alex. 
J. D. D'Orsey, B.D. ; a man of great ability, and one 
who, for his persevering efforts to awaken an interest 
in the study of the English language and obtain for it 
in our Universities that place of honour to which it 
is entitled, deserves the highest praise. He draws 
a melancholy picture, but a true one, when, in his 

I Plea for the study of the English Language \ he 
writes ; — " To such as can hardly believe, that in 
"our Public Schools, Colleges, and Universities, 
"there is not the slightest special training in 

II English, even for those who are about to enter 
" Holy Orders, I can only say that, however sur- 
prising it may seem, it is the simple fact. Some 
" have said, that no English teaching is needed in 
" our Universities, for men are sufficiently in- 
" structed in the language when they ' come up \ 
" I meet this by a simple denial, adding that most 
" men are not sufficiently instructed even when they 
" 'go down. I appeal to College Tutors, Examiners, 
" Bishops' Chaplains, and to the Public, whether 
" I exaggerate or not in making this assertion.*" 

Eead also the 'Report of Her Majesty's Commis- 
1 sioners appointed to inquire into the management 
1 of certain Colleges and Schools'. (Presented to 
Parliament by command of Her Majesty, March, 



110 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 

1864) The following is from the Eeport of the ex- 
amination of the head master of Eton, " the greatest 
" and most influential of our Public Schools." 

" Question, No. 3530. [Lord Clarendon.] ' What 
" ' measures do you now take to keep up English at 
" c Eton ? ' — * There are none at present, except 
" ' through the ancient languages.' 

''Question, No. 3531. 'You can scarcely learn 
" ' English reading and writing through Thucy- 
"'dides?'— 'No/ 

" Question, No. 3532. [Sir S. Northcote.] 'You 
" ' do not think it is satisfactory ? ' — l No ; the 
" ' English teaching is not satisfactory, and as a 
" ' question of precedence, I would have English 
" ' taught before French.' 

" Question, No. 3533. ' You do not consider that 
Cl ' English is taught at present ? ' — ' No! " 

What a disgrace to us as Englishmen is 
this ! — that our noble language, — the language 
of our prayers to the Throne of Heaven; the 
language of the dearest and holiest relationships of 
life ; the language of the maternal lips that have 
blessed us and are now silent in the grave; the 
language of our sorrows and our joys, our aspirations 
and our regrets ; the language in which we breathe 
our consolations to the dying and our farewells to 
those whom we love ; the language in which are 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. Ill 

embalmed the stirring appeals of our patriots and 
the thrilling battle-cries of our warriors ; the 
language of our funeral dirges over those who have 
fallen in defence of our homes, our children, and 
our liberties ; the language in which have been 
sung our poeans of triumph in the hours of victo- 
ries which have made England great among the 
nations ; that this language, — the language of 
Shakspeare, of Milton, and of the Bible, should 
be utterly ignored as a study in our schools and our 
colleges ! This is indeed a disgrace such as the 
barbarians of Greece and of Eome never incurred ; 
and a disgrace upon which men in future ages of 
the world will look back with wonder. 

Ah ! Doctor Alford, we find you guilty of 
injuring by your example and your influence a 
glorious inheritance, such as has been bequeathed 
to no other nation under heaven.* 

I can believe that the English language is 
destined to be that in which shall arise, as in one 
universal temple, the utterance of the worship of 

* Grimm says, " The English tongue possesses a veritable 
" power of expression, such as, perhaps, never stood at the 
" command of any other language of man." — ' Ur sprung cler 
1 Sprache,' p. 52. 

" Take it all in all, it is the grandest and the richest of 
" modern tongues."— ' Edinburgh Review,' July, 1864, p. 176. 



112 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

all hearts. Broad and deep have the foundations 
been laid; and so vast is the area which they 
cover, that it is co-extensive with the great globe 
itself. For centuries past, proud intellectual giants 
have laboured at this mighty fabric ; and still it 
rises, and will rise for generations to come: and 
on its massive stones will be inscribed the names 
of the profoundest thinkers, and on its springing 
arches the records of the most daring flights of the 
master minds of genius, whose fame was made 
enduring by their love of the Beautiful and their 
adoration of the All Good. In this temple the 
Anglo-Saxon mosaic of the sacred words of truth 
will be the solid and enduring pavement; the 
dreams of poets will fill the rich tracery of its 
windows with the many-coloured hues of thought ; 
and the works of lofty philosophic minds will be 
the stately columns supporting its fretted roof, 
whence shall hang, sculptured, the rich fruits of 
the tree of knowledge, precious as "apples of 
" gold ", — " the words of the wise ". 



I am, Eev. Sir, 

Yours most respectfully, 

G. WASHINGTON MO 






1HE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 113 

Note. — Since the publication of the previous 
edition of these letters, I have discovered, in a 
back number of ' The Edinburgh Review \ the 
following passage on the prospects of the English 
language : — 

" The time seems fast approaching when the English 
" language will exercise over the other languages of the 
" world a predominance which our forefathers little dreamt 
" of. The prospects of the English language are now the 
" most splendid that the world has ever seen. The entire 
" number of persons who speak certain of the languages 
" of Northern Europe, — languages of considerable literary 
" repute, — is not equal to the number simply added every 
" year, by the increase of population, to those who speak 
" the English language in England and America alone. 
" There are persons now living* who will in all probability 
"see it the vernacular language of one hundred and fifty 
" millions of the earth's civilized population. 

" Although French is spoken by a considerable propor- 
tion of the population in Canada, and although in the 
" United States there is a large and tolerably compact body 
"of German- speaking Germans, these languages must 
" gradually melt away, as the Welsh and the Gaelic have 
" melted away before the English in our own island. The 
" time will speedily be here when a gigantic community in 
"America, — besides rising and important colonies in 
"Africa and Australia, — will speak the same language, 
" and that the language of a nation holding a high position 
"among th.3 empires of Europe. When this time shall 

* 1859. 



1 14 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

"have arrived, the other languages of Europe will be 
" reduced to the same relative position with regard to the 
" predominant language, as that in which the Basque 
" stands to the Spanish, or the Finnish to the Russian. 

" For such predominance the English language pos- 
" sesses admirable qualifications ; standing, as it does, 
" midway between the Germanic and the Scandinavian 
"branches of the ancient Teutonic, and also uniting the 
" Teutonic with the Romanic in a manner to which no 
" other language has any pretension. A prize was given 
"in 1796 by the Academy at Berlin for an essay on the 
" comparison of fourteen ancient and modern languages of 
" Europe, and in that essay the author, Jenisch, assigns 
"the palm of general excellence to the English; it has 
" also been allowed by other German critics that in regard 
" to the qualifications which it possesses for becoming a 
" general interpreter of the literature of Europe, not even 
"their own language can compete with it." — 'Edinburgh 
' Review \ vol. cix, p. 375,6. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 



CEITICISM No. IV. 



EXAMPLE VerSUS PRECEPT. 



Eev. Sir, 

A very few more words, and then I close 
this controversy. You said in ' Good Words ' for 
1863, page 437, " The less you turn your words 
" right or left to observe Mr. Moon's rules, the tetter". 
It will provoke a smile on the face of the reader 
to be told that although, you give this advice to 
others, you have, in your second edition, altered 
and struck out, altogether, not fewer than eight- 
and-twenty passages which, in their original form, 
I condemned as faulty. 

I 2 



116 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

It is scarcely requisite to say that " altered " does 
not necessarily imply " corrected ". For example, 
in 'Good Words 9 you wrote, — "You perhaps have 
"heard of the barber who, while operating on a 
"gentleman, expressed his opinion, that, after all, 
" the cholera was in the hair. 9 ' As " altered ", the 
sentence runs thus, — " We remember in Punch the 
a barber who, while operating ", &c. This, of 
course, suggests the idea that Punch, besides being 
a wit, and a satirist, is also a barber, and that he 
operates not only upon human consciences but 
also upon human chins ! 

You will very likely put in your irresistible 
plea, — "We do not write for idiots"; but, seeing 
you are always trying to make us believe that the 
style you advocate is one pre-eminent for its direct 
and simple clearness, why did you not say, — " We 
" remember reading in 'Punch,' of the barber who/' 
&c. ? This would have been much more perspicuous. 

For the entertainment of the curious in such 
matters, the original passages, published in ' Good 
' Words ' and condemned in the ' Dean's English ', 
and the altered passages, as they now appear in 
the second edition of your ' Queen's English ', are 
subjoined in parallel columns. 



THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 



117 



THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 



THE 
QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



I. 

" So far from its being ' so well 
* known a fact ' that we reserve the 
singular pronouns 'thou' and 'thee' Struck out 

'entirely for our addresses in prayer 
'to Him who is the highest Person- 
ality ', it is not a fact." — p. 6. 

II. 

"You say, 'The great enemies 
jj to understanding anything printed 
'in our language are the commas. 
'And these are inserted by the 
'compositors without the slightest 
' compunction.' I should say that 
the great enemy to our understand- 
ing these sentences of yours is the 
want of commas." — p. 11. 

III. 

"You speak of persons 'mending 
' their ways '; and in the very next 
paragraph you speak of 'the Queen's Struck out. 

' highivay ', and of ' by-roads ' and 
'private roads ' ". — p. 11. 

IY. 

"Immediately after your speak- 
ing of 'things without life', you 



A comma has been 
inserted between 
" compositors " and 
"without the slight - 
" est compunction ". 
—p. 99. 



118 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH, 



THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 



THE 
QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



startle us with that strange sen- 
tence of yours, — 'I will introduce 
'the body of my essay'. Introduce 



the body J 



12. 



Struck out. 



"'But to be more serious', as 
you say in your essay, and then 
immediately give us a sentence in 
which the grave and the grotesque 
are most incongruously blended. I 
read, 'A man does not lose his 
'mother now in the papers. 9 I 
have read figurative language which 
spoke of lawyers being lost in their 
papers, and of students being buried 
in their books ; but I never read of 
a man losing his mother in the 
"-p. 12. 



rs, a 



"In the papers, 
man does not now 
lose his mother." 
p. 251. 



VI. 

"In the sentence, 'I only bring 
'forward some things \ the adverb 
'only' is similarly misplaced; for, 
in the following sentence, the words 
' Plenty more might be said ', show 
that the ' only ' refers to the ' some 
' things ', and not to the fact of your 



THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 



Ill) 



THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 



THE 
QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



bringing them forward. The sen- 
tence should therefore have been, 
'I bring forward some things only'", 
—p. 14. 



Struck out. 



VII. 

" In your essay, you say, c I re- 
' member, when the French band of "I remember, when 

* the ' Gkiides ' were in this country, the French band of 

* reading in the ' Illustrated News ' \ the ' Guides ' were in 
Were the Frenchmen, when in this this country, to have 
country, reading in 'The Illustrated read in the 'Illus- 
* ' Nnvs 9 ? or did you mean that you * trated News ' ". — p. 
remembered reading in ' The Illus- 249. 

mated News 999 ?— -p. 17. 



VIII. 

" You also say, ' It is not so much 

* of the great highway itself of the 

* Queen 9 s English that I would now 

' speak, as of some of the laws of the « The bye-rules, so 

* road; the by-rules, to compare small to speak, which hang 
'things with great, which hang up up framed at the v a r- 
1 framed at the various stations '. i ous stations." — p. 5. 
What are the great things which 

hang up framed at the various sta- 
tions ? " — p. 18 



120 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 



THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 



THE 
QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



IX. 

" So, too, in that sentence which 
introduces the body of your essay, 
yon speak of 'the reluctance which 
' we in modem Europe have to giving 
1 any prominence to the personality 
s of single individuals in social inter- 
' course ' ; and yet it was evidently 
not of single individuals in social 
intercourse that you intended to 
speak, but of giving, in social inter- 
course, any prominence to the per- 
sonality of single individuals/' — p. 
18. 



Struck out. 



" Continuing my review of your 
essay, I notice that it is said of a 
traveller on the Queen's highway, 
' He bowls along it with ease in a 
' vehicle, which a few centuries ago 
' would have been broken to pieces in 
4 a deep rut, or come to grief in a 
' bottomless sw atrip '. There being 
here no words immediately before 
'come', to indicate in what tense 
that verb is, I have to turn back to 
find the tense, and am obliged to 
read the sentence thus, ' would have 



" He bowls along it 
with ease in a vehicle, 
which a few centu- 
ries ago would have 
been broken to pieces 
in a deep rut, or 
would have come to 
grief in a bottomless 
swamp." — p. 2. 



TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 



121 



THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 



THE 
QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



1 been broken to pieces in a deep 
1 rut, or [would have been] come to 
' grief in a bottomless swamp ' ". 
—p. 25. 

XI. 

" Further on, I find you speaking 
of 'that fertile source of mistakes 
'among our clergy, the mispronun- 
' elation of Scripture proper names'. 
It is not the 'mispronunciation of 
1 Scripture proper names ' which is 
the source of mistakes ; the mis- 
pronunciation of Scripture proper 
names constitutes the mistakes 
themselves of which you are speak- 
ing; and a thing cannot at the 
same time be a source, and that 
which flows from it." — p. 26. 






XII. 



"In some sentences your pro- 
nouns have actually no nouns to 
which they apply. For example, 
you say, 'a journal published by 
1 these people \ By what people ? 
Where is the noun to which this 
relative pronoun refers ? In your 
head it may have been, but it cer- 
tainly is not in your essay." — p. 31. 



Struck out. 



" A journal pub- 
lished by the advo- 
cates of this change." 
—p. 14. 



122 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

THE 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

XIII. 






"Only eight -and -twenty nouns 

. , , , , , The paragraph has 

intervening between the pronoun r . n ] 

, . , , -, x1 < 7 7 . , , . i-i been entirely recon- 

* it and the noun habit to which • J Jrk 

. , n i„ oo structed. — p. 42. 

it refers ! — p. 32. r 



XIY. 

" You make the assertion that " In the English 

the possessive pronoun 'its 9 'never version of the Bible, 

occurs in the 'English version of made in its present 

' the Bible '. Look ' at Leviticus authorized form in 

xxv, 5, ' That which groweth of its the reign of James J." 

' own accord ' ". — p. 33. — p. 7. 



XY. 

There are, in your second essay, 
some very strange specimens of 

Queen's English. You say, * The "The one rule 
* one rule, of all others, which he w hi c h i s supposed by 
' cites '. Now as, in defence of your tlie or dinary rheto- 
particular views, you appeal largely r i c ians to regulate 
to common sense, let me ask, in t } ie arrangement of 
the name of that common sense, WO rds in sentences 

how can one thing be another | s » ^ Cj p |23. 

thing ? How can one rule be of all 
other rules the one which I cite ? " 
—p. 48. 



THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 123 

the 

THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

XVI. 

" You say, ' The verb is not a 
' strict neuter - substantive '. Your In a previous para- 
sentence is an explanation of your graph we now read of 
use of the word 'oddly", in the a verb, "of that class 
phrase, ' would read rather oddly ' ; called neuter - sub - 
and oddly enough you have explained stantive, i.e., neuter, 
it: ' would read' is the conditional and akin in construe - 
form of the verb ; and how can that tion to the verb-sub- 
ever be either a neuter-substantive, stantive to be." — p. 
or a substantive of any other kind?" 206. 
—p. 50. 

XVII. 

" Again, you say, ' The whole 
' number is divided into two classes : 
! the first class, and the last class. To 
' the former of these belong three : to 
' the latter, one '. That is, ' To the 

'former of these belong three; to " To tne f o rmer of 
4 the latter [belong] one'; one belong! tnese belong three: 
When, in the latter part of a com- to the latter belongs 
pound sentence, we change the one ' P* ^ 0# 
nominative, we must likewise change 
the verb, that it may agree with its 
nominative." — p. 51. 

XVIII. 
"The error is repeated in the 
very next sentence. You say, 
' There are three that are ranged 



124 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

THE 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



"There are three 



i under the description 'first 1 : and 
' one that is ranged under the des- 
cription 'last". That is, 'There ,_ _ . ? n , 
, ,, ,, j j the description* first ; 

are three that are ranged nnder , ., . , 

,,, t ... .« ,, -. r , 7 and there is one that 

the description first ; and [there . 

t -i j.i j. • j j il is ranged nnder the 

* are] one that is ranged nnder the , w 

' description 'last." There are onel" ^\ rt 

ki — p. 146. 

— p. 51. r 

XIX. 

" It appears to me that, before 
yon have finished a sentence, yon 
have forgotten how yon began it. 
Here is another instance. Yon say, 
' We call a ' cup-board ' a ' cubbard ', 

* a ' half -penny ' a ' haepenny ', and 
' so of many other compound words'. 
Had yon begun yonr sentence thus, " We call a ' cup- 
' We speak of a 'cup-board' as a ' board ' a ' cubbard ', 
' ' cubbard ', of a 'half-penny' as a a 'half-penny' a 'hae- 
' ' haepenny ', it would have been ' pny ', and we simi- 
correct to say, ' and so of many larly contract many 
'other compound words'; because other compound 
the clause would mean, ' and so \we words." — p. 53. 

' speak"] of many other compound 
' words ' ; but having begun the 
sentence with ' We call 1 it is sheer 
nonsense to finish it with ' and so 
' of 1 ; for it is saying, ' and so [we 
' call] of many other compound 
' words ' ". — p. 53. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 



125 



THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 



THE 
QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 



XX. 

"You speak of rules laid down 

* by the dictionaries' and by the 'pro- 

* feasors of rhetoric 9 ; thus substi- 
tuting, in one case, the works for 
the men; and, in the other case, 
speaking of the men themselves. 
Why not either speak of the ' com- 
'pilers of dictionaries 1 and the 'pro- 
cessors of rhetoric '; or else speak 
of the * dictionaries ' and the * trea- 
tises on rhetoric 'f " — p. 55. 



Struck out. 



XXI. 

"The construction of some of your 
sentences is very objectionable : 
rou say, 'I have noticed the word 

"party 9 used for an individual, "The word ' par ty\ 
■ occurring in Shakspeare '; instead for a man, occurs 
* of, 'I have noticed, in Shakspeare, in Shakspeare." — p. 
' the word ' party ' used for an 246. 
'individual.' But how is it that 
you call a man 'an individual 9 ? " 
—p. 59. 

XXII. 

"You say, 'While treating of 
'the pronunciation of those who 
1 minister in public, two other 



126 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

THE 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

' words occur to me which are very 

' commonly mangled by our clergy. 

' One of these is * covetous \ and its .. T , /7 . 

,,,..« , ti 1 nope r/iat some 

substantive covetousness . 1 nope - 7 . 7 7 

. _ J7 7 . .__ _ x oj my clerical readers 

some who read mese toes will be .,, , . 1 -. 
,.-,,', «, . will be induced to 

induced to leave on pronouncing , ^ 

, , . leave on pronouncing 

'them 'covetious , and 'covetious- ,-, , ,. , i 

, them 'covetious and 

ness . I can assure mem, that t ,. , j 

_ , . „ _ covetiousness . I 

' when thev do thus call mem, one, , -, , , ] 

J . . . can assure them, that 

* at least, of their hearers has his , , , , ,, 

. . n -, - i • -.. when they do thus 

' appreciation of their teaching dis- ^ ^ w§; , & ^ 

'turbed'. I fancy that many a 

one who reads these lines will have 

Ms appreciation of your teaching 

disturbed." — p. 62. 



-p. 63. 



XXIII. 

" Speaking of the word 'its\ you 
say, * Its apparent occurrence in the 
'place quoted is simply due to the 
1 King's printers, who have modern- Struck out. 

' ised the passage '. 'Apparent occur- 
' rence'! It is a real occurrence. Are 
we not to believe our eyes ? " — p. 71. 

XXIY. 

" As for the ' King's printers \ it 
was not they who introduced the 
word ' its ' into the English Bible. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 127 

THE 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLTSH. 

The first English Bible in which 
the word is found, is one that was 
printed at a time when there was « ^ n alteration by 

no King on the English throne, con- ^ e printers" p. 7. 

sequently when there were no 
'King's printers': it was printed 
during the Conimon wealth." — p. 71. 



XXY. 

" The following is, if intentional, 
which I cannot believe, the boldest 
instance of misquotation of Scrip- 
ture, to suit a special purpose, that 
I ever met with. You say, 'In 
1 Numbers xii, 2, we read, ' Hath 
' ' the Lord only spoken by Moses ? 
' ' hath He not spoken also by us ? ' 
'According to some of my cor- 
' respondents, and to Mr. Moon's 
' pamphlet, this ought to be ' Hath 
' ' the Lord spoken only by Moses?' 'I 
'venture to prefer very much the 
' words as they stand'. Now, strange 
as it may appear, after your asser- 
tion, it is nevertheless a fact that the 
words, as you quote them, do not 
occur either in the authorised ver- 
sion, known as King James's Bible 
of 1611, or in our present version, 



128 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

THE 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

or in any other version that I have 
ever seen; and the words, in the order 
in which you say I and your other 
correspondents would have written 
them, do occur in every copy of the The Dean found 
Scriptures to which I have referred ! another passage, 
So you Yery much prefer the words which suited his pur- 
as they stand, do you? Ha! Ha! pose, and he quoted 
Ha ! So do L When next you it. — p. 143. 
write about the adverb ' only \ be 
sure you quote only the right pas- 
sage of Scripture to suit your 
purpose." — p. 73. 



XXYI. 

" You say, ' Though some of the 

* European rulers may be females, 
6 when spoken of altogether, they may 
' be correctly classified under the de- " Though some of 

* nomination ' kings ' \ In this the European rulers 
sentence, the clause which I have ma y be females, they 
put in italics has, what our Gallic may be correctly 
neighbours designate, * a squinting classified, when spo- 
' construction ', it looks two ways ken of altogether, 
at once ; that is, it may be con- under the denomina- 
strued as relating either to the words tion 'kings ' ". — p. 97. 
which precede, or to those which 

follow. Absurd as would be the 
sentence, its construction is such, 






THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 129 

THE 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

that we may understand yon to say, 
6 Some of the European rulers may 
'be females, when spoken of al- 
4 together.' "—p. 100. 

XXYIT. 

" You say, * The derivation of the 

* word, as ivell as the usage of the "The derivation of 

1 greo,t majority of English writers, the word, as well as 

' fix the spelling the other way '. i.e. the usage of the great 

This (as well as that)j^a? it! Excuse majority of English 

me, but I must ask you why you writers, fixes the 

write thus, even though by putting spelling the other 

the question, I put you 'in a fix' way." — p. 33. 
to answer it." — p. 104. 

XXVIII. "At last we abated 

"'At last we abated the nuisance the nuisance by en- 

«by enacting, that in future the acting that in future 

'debatable first syllable should be the first syllable 

' dropped ' ".—p. 106. should be dropped." 

—p. 56. 

In conclusion, allow me, Dr. Alford, to thank 
you for the compliment which you unintentionally 
pay me in making the foregoing alterations. It 
must be admitted that you were wise to alter 
your sentences ; — to turn your words right and 

K 



130 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

left in observance of certain rules. Forgive me if 
I smile at your quietly doing so after you had 
advised your readers to do nothing of the sort. 
It would have been more noble openly to have 
acknowledged yourself to have been in error. 

I now close this controversy, and take my leave 
of you ; and, in doing so, I venture to express a 
hope that you will never again so presume upon 
your reputation and position as to treat an adver- 
sary with contempt. Few persons are so exalted 
that they can with safety be supercilious ; few are 
so lowly that they may with impunity be despised. 

I am, Eev. Sir, 

Yours most respectfully, 

G. WASHINGTON MOOI 

To The Very Eev. Henry Alford, d.d., 

Dean of Canterbury. 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH 

CRITICISM Xo. V. 



PARALLELISMS. 

Rev. Sie, 

It was not my intention to say anything 
more to you respecting the Queen's English ; but 
happening one day to be passing a shop where 
second-hand books are sold, and seeing one with a 
perfectly plain cover, without any title, I had the 
curiosity to stop and open it ; and finding that it 
was an old Quarterly Review containing an essay 
on ' Modern English ', I purchased it for sixpence ; 
and I cannot resist the temptation to communicate 
to you what I then discovered ; namely, the very 
close resemblance which parts of that essay bear 
to certain parts of your ' Queen's English \ I 
looked for the date of the Review, to sea if the 
writer had been borrowing from your book, with- 

K 2 



132 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

out acknowledgment ; but I found that the essay 
had been published some years before your book 
was in print. That you yourself are not the 
author of that essay is evident, not only from the 
fluency of style in which it is written, but also 
from the extensive knowledge which the author 
has of his subject. 

With regard to literary parallelisms generally, I 
can believe it to be possible that to different 
students engaged in the same inquiry there will 
sometimes be presented the same ideas ; but when, 
in two wholly independent works, those ideas are 
expressed in similar words, and are illustrated by 
the same examples ; and when this occurs not 
once only, nor twice only, but nearly a score of 
times in a dozen pages, the coincidence is so 
singular that it challenges investigation. Are we 
to accept such facts as an astonishing instance of 
unintentional identity of thought and illustration 
in two writers ; or are we to believe that the later 
writer has been too proud to acknowledge his obli- 
gations to the earlier, though not too proud to 
appropriate, and give forth as his own, the re- 
flections and observations to which only the earlier 
writer could lay claim ? 

I purpose to bring together various passages from 



TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 133 

' Modern English ' and from € The Queen's English \ 
and to ask you if you can give any explanation of 
the strange concurrence of ideas observable in the 
two works ; for although some of the parallelisms, 
considered separately, may be thought to be not 
very striking ; the whole, considered collectively, is, 
beyond dispute, remarkable. That this opinion is 
not held by me only, will be apparent from the 
following quotation from 'The Saturday Review'. — 
" There is such a striking likeness between many 
" of the Dean's remarks and illustrations and some 
" w r hich have appeared in our own pages, that we 
" can hardly speak a good word for Dean Alford 
" without at the same time speaking it for ourselves. 
" To be sure we do not stand alone in this incidental 
" likeness. We think w r e could point to an article 
" in a Quarterly Eeview which has since ' ceased to 
" ' exist ', the likeness between which and Dean 
" Alford's ' Plea ' is more striking still/' Need I 
tell you that the book which I purchased, and that 
to which the foregoing quotation refers, is the last 
number that was published of * Bentley's Quarterly 
1 Review ' ? Very few copies are now T to be met 
with : but perhaps the author of ' Modern English ' 
will be induced to issue a reprint of that excellent 
essay. It ought to be read by every student of 



134 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 

the language. Whether its re-appearance would, 
by you personally, be regarded with pleasure, or 
not, of course I cannot doubt. If it had never before 
come under your notice, you might be thankful to 
have the opportunity of carefully studying it ; for, 
the author's thoughts and illustrations are so re- 
markably in unison with your own, that their 
oneness will often be a subject of mystery, even to 
the psychologist ; while their parallel expressions 
will make another treasure to be added to the 
curiosities of literature. If, on the contrary, the 
author has already befriended you in your search 
after knowledge, you, for that reason, might be glad 
to see his essay re-published ; as it would afford 
you a suitable occasion on which to offer an 
apology for your past silence respecting a great 
obligation ; a silence which I suppose we must, in 
very charity, attribute to forgetfulness. 

I am, Eev. Sir, 

Yours most respectfully, 

G. WASHINGTON MOON. 



EXTRACTS FEOM 

'MODERN ENGLISH', 



AN ESSAY IN 



' Bentley's Quarterly Keview ', Yol. II. p. 518-542. 



Learning to read is said to be the hardest of human 
acquirements. Nothing, indeed, could make us doubt 
the truth of the saying, except that so many people who 
succeed in mastering this greatest of difficulties break 
down in attempting the easier branches of knowledge 
which follow. To judge by experience, the hardest and 
rarest of all these later achievements would seem to be 
that of writing one's mother tongue. In these days, to 
be sure, everybody writes. But when we have got thus 
far, a fearful thought comes in, — How do we write ? 
We all write English, but what sort of English? Can 
our sentences be construed? Do our words really 
mean what we wish them to ? Of the vast mass of Eng- 
lish which is written and printed, how much is really 
clear and straightforward, free alike from pedantry, from 
affectation, and from vulgarity? — Modern English, p. 518. 
Of the many lines of thought which the prevalent 



136 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

vices of style open to us, there is one which we wish to 
work out at rather greater length. It is that which 
relates to language in the strictest sense — to the choice 
of words. The good old Macedonian rule of calling a 
spade a spade finds but few followers among us. The one 
great rule of the * high-polite style ' is to call a spade 
anything but a spade. — Modem English, p. 525. 

Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of 
manual husbandry. — Queen's English, p. 278. 

The shrinking from the plain honest speech of our 
Teutonic forefathers is ludicrous beyond everything. A 
public officer, from a prime minister to a post-office clerk, 
would be ashamed to send forth a despatch which a Dane, 
a German, or a Dutchman would recognize as written in 
a speech akin to his mother tongue. — Modem English, 
p. 526. 

What are the rules we ought to follow in the choice of 
words ? They seem to us to be very simple. Speak or 
write plain straightforward English, avoiding the affecta- 
tion of slang or of technicality on the one hand, and the 
affectation of purism and archaic diction on the other. 
The history of our mixed language seems to furnish us 
with two very sound principles : Never use a Romance 
word when a Teutonic one will do as well; — Modem Eng- 
lish, p. 529. 

Never use a long word where a short one will do. — Queen's 
English, p. 278* 

but on the other hand, Never scruple to use a Romance 
word when the Teutonic word will not do so well. 

* The Dean, with his usual inconsistency, speaks in a recent number of 
'The Contemporary Review* [Vol. I, p. 438] of a " clirononhotonthologos" 
of hymns. Poor wretched, lumbago- stricken beast of a word ! Every 
joint in its long back groans out " .' " 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 137 

As Sir "Walter Scott, and so many after him, remarked, 
we still have to go to the Norman for our dressed meats. 
— Modern English, p. 531. 

We all remember that Gurth and Wamba complain in 
'Ivanhoe'" that the farm animals, as long as they [? the 
farm animals] had the toil of tending them [? Gurth and 
Wamba] were called by the Saxoa and British names, ox, 
sheep, calf, pig ; but when they were cooked and brought to 
table, their invaders [? the invaders of the pigs] enjoyed 
them under Norman and Latin names. — Queen's English, 
p. 243. 

Our language is one essentially Teutonic; the whole 
skeleton of it is thoroughly so ; all its grammatical forms, 
all the pronouns, particles, & :., without which a sentence 
cannot be put together; all the most necessary nouns 
and verbs, the names of the commonest objects, the ex- 
pressions of the simplest emotions are still identical with 
that old mother-tongue whose varying forms lived on the 
lips of Arminius and of Hengist, &c. — Modern English, 
p. 529. 

Almost all its older and simpler ideas, both for things and 
acts, are expressed by Saxon words. — Queen's English, p. 242. 

But the moment you get upon anything in the least 
degree abstract or technical, you cannot write a sentence 
without using Romance words in every line. — Modern 
English, p. 530. 

»AU its vehicles of abstract thought and science were 
clothed in a Latin garb. — Queen s English, p. 243. 

We have the two elements, the original stock and the 
infusion ; we must be content to use both ; the only thing 
is to learn to use each in its proper place. — Modern Eng- 
lish, p. 530. 



138 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

It would be mere folly in a man to attempt to confine him- 
self to one or other of these main branches of the language. 
— Queen's English, p. 243. 

The whole literature of notices, advertisements, and 
handbills — no small portion of our reading in these days 
— seems to have declared war to the knife against every 
trace of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. — Modern Eng- 
lish, p. 527. 

Our journals seem indeed determined to banish our com- 
mon Saxon words altogether.— Queen s English, p. 245. 

There are a few words which will obstinately stick 
to their places : 'of and ' and ' ' in 9 and * out \ ' you 9 , 
i I\ and 'they 9 , 'is 9 and 'was 9 and 'shall 9 , and a few 
more of the like kind, seem to have made up their 
minds not to move. But ' man 9 , ' woman \ ' child 9 , and 
' house 9 have already become something like archaisms. — 
Modern English, p. 527. 

You never read in them of a man, or a woman, or a child. 
— Queen's English, p. 245. 

What ens rationis of any spirit would put up with 
being called ' a man \ when he can add four more 
syllables to his account of himself, and be spoken of as 
1 cm individual 9 ? The man is clean gone, quite wiped 
out ; his place is filled up by ' individuals ', ' gentlemen 9 , 
' characters \ and 'parties \ — Modern English, p. 527. 

A 'man' is an ' individual' ', or a 'person', or a 'party'. 
— Queen's English, p, 245. 

The ' woman \ who in times past was the ' man 9 s ' wife, 
has vanished still more completely. In all * high-polite ' 
writing, it is a case of ' Oh no, we never mention her/ 
The law of euphemisms is somewhat capricious ; one 



THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 139 

cannot always tell which words are decent and which are 
not. The ' coiv ' may be spoken of with perfect propriety 
in the most refined circles : in this case it is the male 
animal which is not fit to be mentioned ; at least, Ameri- 
can delicacy requires that he should be spoken of as a 
* gentleman coiv '. But the female of ' horse ' is doubtful, 
that of ' dog ' is wholly proscribed. When the existence 
of such a creature must be hinted at, ' lady dog ' supplies 
a parallel formula to ' gentleman cow '. And it really 
seems as if the old-fashioned feminine of 'man 9 were fast 
getting proscribed in like manner. 

We, undiscerning male creatures that we are, might 
have thought that ' woman ' was a more elegant and more 
distinctive title than 'female \ — Modem English, p. 527. 
A ' woman' is a 4 female '. — Queen's English, p. 246. 

We read only the other day a report of a lecture on the 
poet Crabbe, in which she who was afterwards Mrs. 
Crabbe was spoken of as ' a female to whom he had formed 
' an attachment \ To us, indeed, it seems that a man's 
wife should be spoken of in some way which is not equally 
applicable to a ewe lamb or to a favourite mare. — Modern 
English, p. 527. 

Why should a ' woman' be degraded from her position as 
a rational being, and be expressed [sic] by a word which 
might belong to any animal tribe ? — Queen's English, p. 246. 

But it was a 'female' who delivered the lecture, and we 
suppose the 'females 1 know best about their own affairs. 
It is true, 'female * is not our only choice : there are 
also ' ladies ' in abundance, and a still more remarkable 
class of ' young persons \ Why a ' young person ' in- 
variably means a young ivomau is a great mystery, 
especially as we believe an ' old person ' may be of either 
sex. — Modem English, p. 527. 



140 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

A 'woman' is, if unmarried, a 'young person ', which 
expression, in the newspapers, is always of the feminine 
gender. — Queen's English, p. 246. 

Men and women being no more, it is only natural that 
' children ' should follow them. There are no longer any 

* boys ' and ' girls 9 ; there are instead * young gentlemen \ 

* young ladies \ 'juveniles ', 'juvenile members of the 
' community 9 . — Modem English, p. 527. 

A 'child' is a 'juvenile'. — Queen's English, p. 246. 

' Houses \ too, have disappeared along with those who 
used to live in them. A 'man 9 and a ' woman 9 used to 

* live 9 in a * house '; but an * individual 9 , or a 'party \ 
when he has conducted to the 'hymeneal altar 9 the young 
'female 9 , to whom he has 'formed an attachment ', cannot 
possibly do less than take her to * reside 9 in a ' residence \ 
A ' house ' ! there is no such thing : there is the genus 

* residence 9 , divided into the several species of 'mansion 9 , 
' villa residence ', ' cottage residence ', and * tenement \ — 
Modern English, p. 528. 

A man going home is set down as * an individual ' pro- 
ceeding to his 'residence'. — Queen's English, p. 248. 

England used to be studded with * inns ' — inns where 
it was said that one used to get one's warmest welcome. 
ISTow, there are no such things : to be sure, there are 

* hotels 9 , which do not contain a single ' room 9 , but which 
are full of ' apartments \ — Modem English, p. 528. 

No one lives in 'rooms' hut always in 'apartments'. — 
Queen's English, p. 248. 

As man and his dwelling-place exist no longer, it is no 
wonder that all the sorts and conditions of men to whom 
one was used are now to be traced no longer. * Lords 9 
and * nobles ' have made way for an 'aristocracy 9 of whom 



THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 141 

the law of England knows nothing; and the whole 
commons of this realm, who once were * the people of 
' England,' have now sunk into ' the million ', and * the 

* masses '. A ' shop ' is an ' establishment '; and to * take 
a walk' is to 'promenade 9 . Our 'landowners' are 'pro- 
prietors ', our 'farmers' and 'yeomen' are 'agriculturists' , 
and the * working man ', who toils in the sweat of his 
brow, is content to cease to have a substantive being at 
all, and to be spoken of, like a metaphysical abstraction, 
as an ' operative '.—Modern English, p. 528. 

One form of the vice of which we complain is the 
fashion of using purely abstract nouns, just because they 
are longer and stranger, to express very simple things. 

* Locality ', for instance, is a good philosophical term, but 
it is an intolerable barbarism when used as a mere 
synonym for 'place'. — Modern English, p. 528. 

We never hear of a 'place', it is always a 'locality'. — 
Queen's English, p. 248. 

' Celebrity ', again, may pass as an abstract term ; it is 
a mere vulgarism when used of a celebrated person. 
Then, again, there is the mere affectation of grandeur 
which makes a maid- of- all- work talk of her ' situation ', 
a house-agent talk of his ' clients ', and a schoolmaster 
dub himself * Principal of a Collegiate Institution \ In 
short, this sort of slang pursues us from our cradles to 
our graves. The unfortunate 'party' or 'individual', 
when at last he is removed from his earthly ' residence ', 
cannot, like his fathers, be ' buried ' in a * church-yard ' or 
' burying -ground '; some * company ' with ' Limited Ida- 
' bility ' is ready to * inter ' him in a ' cemetery ' or in a 
' metropolitan necropolis '. — Modern English, p. 538. 

Let us take another word used nearly like 'indi- 
' vidua!', though its use is, what that of 'individual', 



142 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

we fear, hardly is, still felt as distinctively a vulgarism. 
This is 'party \ Here is a technical term, thoroughly 
good in its proper place, abused into a vile piece of slang. 
— Modern English, p. 537. . 

The word 'party' for a man is especially offensive. — 

Queen's English, p. 246. 

There is something very like it in our version of the 
Book of Tobit, vi, 7. * We must make a smoke thereof 
' before the man or the woman, and the party shall be no 
' more vexed '. — Modern English, p. 537. 

Strange to say, the use is not altogether modern. It occurs 
in the English version of the apocryphal book of Tobit, vi, 
7. l If [a devil or] an evil spirit trouble any, one [? we] 
* must make a smoke thereof before the man or the woman, 
' and the party shall be no more vexed'. — Queen's English, 
p. 246* 

A witness, we remember, in the famous Waterloo 
Bridge and carpet-bag mystery, ' saw a short party go 
■ over the bridge \ A 'short party 9 , if it meant anything, 
might mean a political leader with a small following. 
But the witness hardly meant that he saw three or four 
statesmen of peculiar views go over the bridge, inasmuch 
as the * short party ', if we rightly remember, turned out 
to be one woman. — Modern English, p. 537. 

Curious is the idea raised in one's mind by hearing of a 
short party going over the bridge. — Queen's English, p. 247. 

*The reader will perceive that the Dean, by quoting only a part 
of the previous clause in the verse, has, virtually, misquoted the passage. 
According to the Dean's version, a smoke is to be made of the evil spirit! 
If that be so, might not Mrs. Glass's advice be useful ? — " First catch 
your hare". The Dean makes nonsense of the words; the verse really 
runs thus ; — " And he said unto him, Touching the heart and the liver, if 
" a devil or an evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof " 
— &c. G. W. M. 



TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 143 

So much for nouns, we will now try a verb or two. No 
word can be better in its place than to ' inquire \ but it is 
a strange abuse of language to employ it when you 
simply mean to ' ash \ Ask a waiter — waiters are, beyond 
all doubt, the greatest masters of the 'high-polite style ' — 
any sort of question, the time of a train, or the chance 
of a dinner, and he always answers * Til inquire \ JSTow, 
in the English language, to ' inquire ' implies a much 
more formal and lengthy business than merely to ' ash \ 
A Commission, say at Wakefield or at Gloucester, ' in- 

* quires ' into something, and, in the course of so doing, 

* asks ' a great many particular questions. But in the 
other cases, if you use ' inquire ' indiscriminately for 
' ask ', you destroy its special force in its proper place. — 
Modern English, p. 538.* 

i Inquire \ however, is harmless compared with another 
verb, whose abuse is one of the most marked signs of the 
style we complain of. Those who call ' men ' ' indivi- 
' duals ' are sure to ' allude to 9 them instead of speaking 
of them. Here, again, a thoroughly good word is per- 
verted. To ' allude to ' a thing is to speak of it darkly, 

* If the Dean, instead of wasting his time in a fruitless attempt 
to teach English, had turned his attention to the study of Hebrew, of 
which he is confessedly ignorant notwithstanding that as " a dignitary of 
"the church" he is "set for the defence of the gospel" and therefore 
ought to be "throughly furnished unto all good works ", he would have 
been able to render good service to the cause of truth by demonstrating 
that the alleged contradiction between 1 Samuel xxviii, 6, and 1 Chroni- 
cles x, 14, is apparent only, and not real. The words which in those two 
passages are translated "inquired" are, in the original, very different, 
the one from the other. There is no contradiction. Saul asked, but he 
did not inquire, and therefore "the Lord answered him not". An impor- 
tant lesson, quite worthy of a Dean's teaching, is treasured in the 
apparent incongruity, — " he inquired", and yet, "he inquired not." "Ye 
" shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your 
"heart.'* G. W. M. 



144 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

to hint at it without any direct mention. To use it in 
any other way is to lose the use of a good word in its 
proper place. But suppose a letter goes wrong in the 
Post-office, and you write to St. Martin' s-le- Grand to 
complain. The invariable beginning of the official reply 
is to tell you the fate of the letter you allude to in your 
letter of such a date, though you have most likely 
alluded to nothing, but have told your story straightfor- 
wardly without hint or ' innuendo ' of any kind. — 
Modern English ', p. 539. 

1 Allude to ' is used in a new sense by our journals, and not 
only by them, but also by the Government Offices. If I have 
to complain to the Post Office that a letter legibly directed 
to me at Canterbury has been missent to Caermarthen I get 
a regular red-tape reply, beginning c The letter alluded, to by 
you '. Now I did not ' allude to* the letter at all; I men- 
tioned it as plainly as I could. — Queen's English, p. 253. 

We have now done. If the English language goes to 
the dogs, it will not be for want of our feeble protest. 
We believe that to preserve our mother-tongue in its purity 
is a real duty laid upon every man who is called upon to 
speak or to write it. We do not at all write in the interest 
of any sort of archaism or affectation. We ask only for 
pure and straightforward English, rejecting neither 
element of our mixed language, but using the words 
supplied by both, in their proper places and in their 
proper meaning. We ask for English free from all trace 
of the cant and slang of this or that school or clique or 
profession; for a language neither 'provincial' nor 
' metropolitan ' — English which is at once intelligible to 
the unlearned, and which will yet endure the searching 
criticism of the scholar. — Modern English, p. 542. 



APPENDIX. 



THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

A Criticism from 'The Churchman.' 

We scarcely know whether to look upon the labours of 
Dean Alford in the cause of our language as a loss or as a 
gain. In many ways his remarks on the Queen's English 
must have been attended with good results. The wide 
circulation which they obtained, when first published in 
1 Good Words ', has caused a vast number of persons to 
pay far more attention to this much-neglected subject 
than they had ever done before. Many have been brought 
for the first time to bestow a serious attention on their 
mother-tongue, and to see that the consideration of the 
words in which their thoughts are clothed is a matter of 
no small moment, and furnishes a true test of a nation's 
character and progress. In these papers they have been 
warned against the use of mean and slipshod English, 
against an affected and unnatural style, and, in fact, 
against most of the faults which mar the language of the 
present day, and which may be found so abundant in the 
columns of the periodical press, and in the conversation 
of half-educated persons. On the other hand, the Dean 
has set an evil example by rendering the standard of 
right and wrong in language more wavering and un- 
certain thanever : custom, according to him, is the only 

L 



146 APPENDIX. 

court of appeal, and the laws of grammar are to be left 
to pedants and pedagogues. If this is to be the case, it 
seems hopeless to bring many of those, who habitually 
break the laws of language, to a sense of their short- 
comings. They have been brought up from their birth 
amongst persons who commit the same faults, and they 
are unable to see the nature of these faults. If referred 
to the laws of grammar, they appeal to the authority of 
Dean Alford to show that it is pedantic to be guided by 
grammarians; if referred to the custom of educated 
persons, they maintain their own experience against that 
of their reprovers, and declare that their own usage is 
the customary one, and that the one recommended to 
them is contrary to custom. 

Amongst the paradoxical statements of Dean Alford, 
we have selected some of the most prominent for com- 
ment. At the time of the first appearance of these 
papers, a great, and, in our opinion, not unreasonable, 
outcry was made against the sanctioning of the phrase, 
" It is me ". The Dean brings forth Dr. Latham in support 
of his opinion, and refers us to the following extract from 
that gentleman's ' History of the English Language': — 

"We may call the word me a secondary nominative, inas- 
much as such phrases as It is me — It is I, are common. To call 
such expressions incorrect English, is to assume the point. No one 
says that c 'est moi is j^ad French, and c'est je is good. The fact 
is, that with us the whole question is a question of degree. Has or 
has not the custom been sufficiently prevalent to have transferred 
the forms me, ye, and you, from one case to another ? Or perhaps 
we may say, is there any real custom at all in favour of J, except 
so far as the grammarians have made one ? It is clear that the 
French analogy is against it. It is also clear that the personal pro- 
noun as a predicate may be in a different analogy from the personal ' 
pronoun as a subject ". 



APPENDIX. 147 

We have great respect for Dr. Latham's learning, but 
in a matter like the present we cannot submit to his 
authority. Modern writers on language, when treating 
of well-known words and phrases, are often apt to seek 
opportunities for displaying their own ingenuity in giv- 
ing unusal explanations of them, and Dr. Latham is by 
no means free from a partiality for crotchets of this kind. 
There is no analogy between English and French in this 
matter. It is a peculiarity of the French language that 
each pair of words which represents the different cases 
of the singular personal pronouns in other languages is 
in French represented by three words instead of two. I, 
me — -je, me, moi; thou, thee — tu, te, toi; he, him — il, le, 
fori. Moi, toi, lui, are used as nominative cases when 
coming after the verb. If Dr. Latham's reasoning is 
right, that because we have in French c'est moi, not c'est 
je, therefore, it is right to say in English, " it is me ", not 
"it is I": then it follows that because we say c'est toi, 
not c'est tu, c'est lui, not c'est il, it is right to say "it is 
"thee", "it is him", or "her". It seems to us as bad 
grammar to say, "it is me", in English, as c'est me in 
French. He further says that "when constructions are 
"predicative, a change is what we must expect rather 
"than be surprised at" We see this change of con- 
struction in French, when the pronouns are predicative, 
because each pronoun has three distinct forms, but as 
English, together with the rest of the European languages 
(with which we are acquainted), has only two forms 
of personal pronouns, therefore the change cannot take 
place when the construction is predicative. Another rea- 
son given by Dr. Latham for the usuage is, that me is 
not the proper, but only the adopted, accusative of J, 
"being in faot a distinct and independent form of the 

L 2 



148 APPENDIX. 

"personal pronoun ". We do not see why, because me is 
the adopted accusative of J, it should become " a second- 
" ary nominative ". All the European languages of which 
we have any knowledge have an adopted accusative for 
the first person singular, but we do not find in them 
any traces of its being used as a secondary nominative 
(though it may appear so in French) ; why, then, are we 
to grant this license to English, merely to gratify a care- 
less habit which may easily be corrected? We now come 
to consider Dean Alford's own remarks on these three 
little words. He seems to think that the reason for the 
substitution of me for J is a shrinking from obtruding 
our own personality;* and endeavours to confirm his 
view by referring to an instance of the contrary practice 
in the well-known passage : — 

"He said unto them, ' It is I, be not afraid '. This is a capital 
instance ; for it shows us at once why the nominative should be 
sometimes used. The Majesty of the Speaker here, and his pur- 
pose of re- assuring the disciples by the assertion that it was none 
other than Himself, at once point out to us the case in which it 
would be proper for the nominative, and not the accusative, to be 
used". 

# "This shrinking from the use of the personal pronoun, this 
authophoby, as it may be called, is not indeed a proof of the 
modesty it is designed to indicate ; any more than the hydrophobia 
is a proof that there is no thirst in the constitution. On the con- 
trary, it rather hetrays a morbidly sensitive self-consciousness." 

" So far indeed is the anxiety to suppress the personal pronoun 
from being a sure criterion of humility, that there is frequently a 
ludicrous contrast between the conventional generality of our lan- 
guage and the egotism of the sentiments expressed in it." 

" Modesty must dwell within, in the heart ; and a brief I is the 
modestest, most natural, simplest word I can use." * Guesses at 
Truth,' pp. 142, 148, 150. 



APPENDIX. 149 

We will venture to say that the sole reason which the 
translators of the Bible had for writing " it is I " in this 
verse, was because they considered it the proper gram- 
matical phrase, and "it is me" ungrammatical. How 
would Dean Alford account for the two following verses, 
Matt, xxvi, 22, 25, " And they were exceeding sorrowful, 
" and began every one of them to say unto Him, Lord, is 
"it I ? " " Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered 
"and said, "Master, is it I?" Certainly, according to 
the Dean's reasoning, we ought in each case to have, "Is 
" it me ? " but there is no trace of such a usage through- 
out the Bible. 

Dean Alford asks the question, " What are we to think 
" of the question whether than does or does not govern 
" an accusative case ?" — 

"The fact is, that there are two ways of constructing a clause 
with a comparative and ' than '. You may say either ' than I' or 
1 thorn me'. If you say the former, you use what is called an 
elliptical expression, i.e. an expression in which something is left 
out— and that something is the verb ' am' . ' He is wiser than I', 
being filled out, would be, 'He is wiser than I am'. 'He is wiser 
than me ' is the direct and complete construction". 

We agree that there are two ways of constructing the 
clause — a right way and a wrong way. "He is wiser 
"than I" is right. "He is wiser than me" is wrong. 
There is no occasion to make use of an ellipse at all. 
Than is a conjunction, and, therefore, cannot govern 
an accusative case, as it is a fundamental rule of all 
languages that conjunctions should couple like cases. We 
cannot see in what way " He is wiser than me " can be 
more complete than "He is wiser than I". Again, we 
find the rule laid down by the Dean, that, when solemnity 
is required, the construction in the nominative is used- 



150 APPENDIX. 

and he quotes John xiv, 28, " My father is greater than 
I ". This would be of some weight if he could bring a 
single instance in which than of itself governed an accu- 
sative in a case where solemnity was not required, but we 
do not think that he will find one in the Bible. In Gen. 
xxxix, 8, Joseph says to Potiphar's wife, " Behold, my 
master knoweth not what is with me in the house, and 
" he hath committed all that he hath to my hand ; there 
"is none greater in the house than I; neither hath 
" he kept back ", &c. We cannot suppose that the trans- 
lators wished to represent Joseph as attaching any 
solemnity to the words " there is none greater than I ", 
which are introduced in the middle of a long sentence. 
The reason for their occurring thus is because the trans- 
lators knew that the phrase, "there is none greater than 
"me", is entirely ungrammatical. Dean Alford considers 
that the invariable use of " than whom ", instead of "than 
" who ", is a proof that than governs an accusative case, 
as in ' Paradise Lost', ii. 299: — 

" Which, when Beelzebub perceived, than whom, 

" Satan except, none higher sat '*. 
We quite agree that, to say " than who ", would be in- 
tolerable in this instance to most ears, but we do not 
consider that this single anomalous expression is enough 
to warrant us in saying that "than" takes the accusative. 
The expressions " than whom ", " than which ", are very 
sparingly used in writing, and never in ordinary con- 
versation. Probably the first person who wrote "than 
" whom ", did so in ignorance of the rules of grammar, 
and the error was so perpetuated by his coypists that it 
became a settled usage. Another explanation of it is, 
that the " m " was added for the sake of euphony. How- 
ever that may be, we cannot allow that one anomaly of 



APPENDIX. 151 

this kind can justify us in going counter to the grammar 
and usage of all languages. 

As is a word of precisely the same character as than : 
would Dean Alford defend the vulgarisms, " I am as tall 
" as him ", " He is as tall as me " ? * 

A correspondent has kindly sent us a well-known ex- 
ample of the latter usage from one of our standard 
poets : — 

"The nations not so blest as thee 

" Must in their turn to tyrants fall, 
" Whilst thou shalt flourish, great and free, 
"The dread and envy of them all." 

Thomson's ' Rule Britannia.' 

In our opinion the first line of this stanza is utterly 
indefensible. 

The Dean upholds the use of the verb " to leave ", in a 
neuter, or, as he bids us term it, an absolute sense. He 
defends the sentence " I shall not leave before December 
1 " on the ground that the verb is still active, but the 
object is still suppressed. We deny that to " leave " is 
here used in an active sense ; it is synonymous with " to 
" go away ", " depart ", &c, which are neuter verbs. The 
Dean brings forward the instances of the verbs "to read" 
and " to write ", *as though they were analogous cases, 
because they may be used at will either transitively or 
intransitively. These verbs, however, themselves express 
an occupation, just as much as to run, to sit, or to stand. 
If we wish to know how any one is spending his time, it 
is a sufficient answer to say " He is reading " ; if we are 
aware of that fact, and wish to know what is the object 
of his study, then we must use the verb transitively, and 
say, "He is reading 'The Queen's English'", or any other 

*Yes. See ir Tlie Queen s English', 2nd edition, page 160.— G.W.M. 



152 APPENDIX. 

book. " To read " has become to all of us a complete no- 
tion ; " to leave " is not so ; and, as we said before, must 
be used as an equivalent for to depart, or go away, in the 
phrase quoted. This is an unnecessary extension of its 
signification, and as all such extensions give rise to more 
or less ambiguity, they should be avoided. The use of a 
verb in an intransitive as well as a transitive sense must 
always be a matter depending entirely on authority. 
Such a use of "to leave " was ignored formerly, and has 
arisen only within comparatively few years from the care- 
lessness of slipshod speakers and writers. In the present 
day it is eschewed by good writers of English; by others 
it is used invariably, but quite unnecessarily, in a neuter 
sense. 

In Dr. Alford's objections to the restrictions placed by 
grammarians on the words first and last, former and latter, 
he makes the following remarks : — 

" * First ' is unavoidably used of that one in a series with which 
we begin, whatever be the number which follow ; whether many or 
few. Why should not last be used of that one in a series with 
which we end, whatever be the number which preceeded, whether 
many or few?" 

We should have thought that the answer was quite 
evident. First has two meanings; it stands for the 
superlative of the comparative former, and for the ordinal 
corresponding to the cardinal number one. Last is used 
only as the superlative of latter ; it cannot, therefore, be 
ever used in numerical statements. In speaking of a 
book in two volumes, which are numbered 1 and 2, we 
refer to the 1st or the 2nd volume ; but 1st is not here the 
same as first, the superlative of former. This is easily 
shown in the case of most of our large public schools, 
where the 6th form is the first, and the 1st form the last 



APPENDIX. 153 

in the school. If we had such a word as onefh to stand as 
the ordinal of one, we should say that the sixth form is 
the first, and the oneth the last ; as it is, we are obliged 
to make first do duty in each case. 

We do not agree theoretically with the Dean's remarks 
on the aspiration of the "h" in humble, though practi- 
cally we think it advisable to follow the growing usage of 
the day, and sound the " h ". It was formerly almost as 
common to say umble as it is to say onour and (hjour. In 
regard to the words " ospital" 9 "erb", and "umble", our 
author says that all of them are "very offensive, but the 
"last of them by far the worst, especially when heard 
" from officiating Clergymen ". We believe that the 
reason why the Clergy have so commonly adopted the 
practice of sounding the " h " in humble, is because edu- 
cated persons cannot endure the idea of its being said of 
them that they drop their "h's"; directly, therefore, 
the custom became prevalent of aspirating humble, the 
Clergy at once took it up. It will be the same as soon as 
it becomes at all usual to sound the "h " in honour, hon- 
esty, &c. We deny that " umble and hearty no man can 
"pronounce without a pain in his throat"; it is just as 
easy to pronounce as " under heaven ". 

There are many other remarks in this work with which 
we cannot agree, but we have no wish to weary our readers 
with further criticisms on this somewhat dry subject. 



THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
A Criticism from Routledge's Magazine. 

The study of language is one of the most instructive 
and, at the same time, one of the most interesting occu- 
pations with which we can employ ourselves ; and, in the 



154 APPENDIX. 

present age of advanced education, it is absolutely 
necessary for everybody to obtain a knowledge of his 
own language, and to read, speak, and write it in accord- 
ance with the known rules on the subject. However well 
taught a man may be in other branches of study, he will 
never make his way in the world unless he can speak 
correctly, since correct speaking is, as it were, the out- 
ward attribute of the gentleman, and the one by which 
his other qualifications are judged. 

The Dean is evidently not a graceful writer of English, 
as he is sure to have put forth all his strength in the 
composition of a book on language. This strength, how- 
ever, seems to consist in devising the most unnatural 
manner of writing good English, and in violating some 
of Lord Karnes's most important rules with regard to 
words expressing things connected in thought being 
placed as near together as possible. 

* The Queen's English,' we must state, professes to be a 
reprint from a widely circulated periodical entitled ' Good 
' Words,' and the subject is said to be * presented to the 
1 public in a considerably altered form.' 

This is strictly true, for, having compared the reprint 
with the original articles, we are able to compliment the 
Dean on the many judicious alterations he has made; 
thanks, perhaps, to the suggestions given by a gentle- 
man styled, in a country paper, " a knight, bearing on 
" his shield the emblem of the lunar orb ", and other 
lovers of pure English who have considered that the 
reverend grammarian has in some way denied the pure 
well of English. 

Sitting down with the book,* and the volume of * Good 
i Words ' for 1863 before us, we note no great difference 
* Second Edition. 



APPENDIX. 155 

until we come to the following expression : " The Queen 
"is of course no more the proprietor of the English lan- 
guage than you or J" — (see 'Good Words'), but in the 
volume we have "than any one of us." Why this change? 
On page 152 of the book we read: "What are we to think 
"of the question, whether 'than' does or does not govern 
"an accusative case? 'than I': 'than me': which is 
"right ? My readers will probably answer without hesita- 
" tion, the former. But is the latter so certainly wrong ? 
" We are accustomed to hear it stigmatized as being so ; 
" but, I think, erroneously, Milton writes, 'Paradise Lost,' 
"ii, 299 — 

" ' Which when Beelzebub perceived, than xvhom, 
Satan except, none higher sat.' 

"And thus every one of us would speak: 'than who', 
" would be intolerable. And this seems to settle the qicestion." 
So the Dean thinks. We, however, do not. Poetry 
is not often considered a high authority on matters of 
grammatical construction, although the Dean seems to 
think it should be, since this is the only instance of 
"than" governing the accusative that he deigns to cite: 
besides, it is evident that in many cases, the employment 
of the accusative instead of the nominative, gives to the 
sentence another meaning, thus : 

1 He likes you better than me. 

2 He likes you better than I. 

Surely it is manifest to everybody that the first form 
means that he likes you better than [he likes] me, and 
that the latter means, he likes you better than I [like 
you] ; and yet our Dean in an authoritative manner says, 
that you may say either "than I", or "than me", but 
that the former should be used only when solemnity is 
required, as " My Father is greater than I." 



156 APPENDIX. 

Is solemnity required when mention is made of the 
Queen in regard to her proprietorship of the English 
language ? We trow not. Why, then, does our Dean lay 
down a rule, and break it on the first page of his Essays? 
This reflection seems to have occurred to the mind of the 
author, who probably in his reprint weighed with care 
every expression he made use of. This at any rate seems 
the only reason why he should alter "than you or J" to 
" than any one of us" and thus screen himself under an 
expression which fits either rule. 

Let us pause for a short time and note what some 
authorities write about this conjunction. Lowth is of 
opinion that such forms as " thou art wiser than me " are 
bad grammar. Mr. E. F. Graham, in his excellent book 
on English style, quotes the objective case after "than" 
as a downright grammatical error, whilst our old friend 
Lindley Murray devotes a page and a half to the dis- 
cussion of this question, and, after citing the lines of 
Milton just quoted, concludes his notice by saying, " The 
"phrase than whom, is, however, avoided by the best 
" modern writers ". The crowning point of all, however, 
is that the very author whom Dean Alford quotes in 
support of his theory, says in the first book of ' Paradise 
'Lost':— 

u What matter where, if I be still the same. 
And what I should be, all but less than he?'* 

Near the end of a paragraph in the first Essay occurs 
the following sentence, which is omitted in the book : — 
"And I really don't wish to be dull; so please, dear 
" reader, to try and not think me so." 

It was wise, indeed, on the Dean's part, to omit this 
sentence in his book, for probably it contains the worst 
mistake he has made. Try and think, indeed ! Try to 



APPENDIX. 157 

think, we can understand. Fancy saying " the dear 
"reader tries and thinks me so"; for, mind, a conjunc- 
tion is used only to connect words, and can govern no 
case at all. However, as the Dean has not allowed this 
to appear in his book, we refrain from alluding further to it. 

As the Dean admits that his notes are for the most part 
insulated and unconnected, we presume that we need make 
no apology if our critical remarks happen to partake of 
the same character; for, the reader will easily understand 
that criticism on unconnected topics must itself also be 
unconnected. 

Who does not recollect with pleasure those dear old 
ladies, Sairah Gamp and Betsey Prig ? " Which, altering 
" the name to Sairah Gamp, I drink," said Mrs. Prig. 

" As I write these lines, which I do while waiting in a 
" refreshment room at Reading between a Great Western 
"and a South Eastern train," says the Dean. It is. 
always interesting to know the time when, and the place 
where, great men have written their books; and we thank 
Dean Alford for telling us where he wrote this elegant 
sentence; but fancy, what a very small refreshment room 
there must be at Eeading, if it stands between two trains. 
May we venture to suggest that the sentence would have 
been improved if " which I do ", and the words from 
" between " to " train ", had been altogether omitted. 
" Which you are right, my dear ", says Mrs. Harris. 

On page 67 the Dean comes to that which he says must 
form a 'principal part of his little work. The principal 
part means, we believe, more than half of anything, but 
as in the present work there are evidently two principal 
parts (at least), it appears that the volume contains more 
than the two halves. Perhaps the Dean was waiting be- 
tween two trains in Ireland when he penned this sentence. 



158 APPENDIX. 

With regard to the demonstrative pronouns, " this 
" refers to the nearest person or thing, and that to the 
" most distant", says Murray. This, however, is not Dean 
Alford's view of the matter. 

After mentioning the name Sophoenetus (and no other) 
he writes, " Every clergyman is, or ought to be, familiar 
" with his Greek Testament ; two minutes' reference to 
" that will show him how every one of these names ought 
" to be pronounced." 

Who is right here — Lindley Murray or the Dean of 
Canterbury ? Stop ! stop ! Not so fast. In theory, the 
Dean agrees with our grammarian ; for, eleven pages 
further on, he says, — "'this' and 'these 1 refer to persons 
" and things present, or under immediate considera- 
tion; 'that 9 and 'those' to persons and things not pre- 
" sent, nor under immediate consideration." He then 
mentions a Scottish friend, who always designates the 
book which he has in hand as "that booh. 99 Surely this 
Scotchman and the Dean belong to one family. 

We now come with much pleasure to the last fault 
which we have to find with Dr. Alford's book. We have 
purposely deferred any mention of this particular sub- 
ject until now, on the same principle as that which actu- 
ated the schoolboy who always kept the best till the last. 

On page 280 we read the following excellent remarks : — 

" Avoid, likewise, ail slang words. There is no greater 
" nuisance in society than a talker of slang. It is only fit 
" (when innocent, which it seldom is) for raw schoolboys 
" and one-term freshmen, to astonish their sisters with." 

Of course, after expressing himself so strongly on this 
point, it is not to be expected that, in a work on the 
Queen's English, Dean Alford will make use of slang 
terms. Let us see. 



APPENDIX. 159 

On page 2, he tells us, " He bowls along it with ease in 
" a vehicle, which a few centuries ago would have been 
" broken to pieces in a deep rut, or [would have] come to 
" grief in a bottomless swamp." 

In the original notes the words " ivould have " were 
omitted. One of his censors then suggested that the 
sentence was " or would have been come to grief". On 
page 132 of his book, the Dean defends his elliptical 
mode of spelling : but, on page 2, by altering it, he 
tacitly admits that he is wrong. 

On page 41 he tells us about some persons who had 
been detained by a tipple. 

On page 178 we are told that the Dean and his family 
took a trap from the inn. 

And, on page 154, he writes to Mr. Moon, "If you see 
" an old party in a shovel that will be me ". Whereas, on 
page 245, in sneering at our journals he says, a man in 
them is a party. Now we are persuaded that no news- 
paper writes of a man in such vulgar language. This 
style seems to have been left to a Dean when writing on 
sontroversial subjects. 



THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
A Criticism from ' The Patriot.' 

Dean Aleord has collected into a book his papers contri- 
buted to 'Good Words ' and, of course, has subjected 
them to a fresh and final revision. He tells us, indeed, 
that " now, in a considerably altered form, they are pre- 
sented to the public"; so that we may fairly regard 
both the canons and the composition of this volume as 
the deliberate and final setting forth of the Dean's no- 
tions of the proprieties of the English language. No 



160 APPENDIX. 

plea of hasty writing, such as unfortunate newspaper 
writers, or public lecturers, or even magazine contri- 
butors, might fitly urge, is valid here. The Dean tells us, 
too — what we are very glad to learn, and what speaks 
well for the Christian placability of both parties — that 
the somewhat sharp passage of arms betwixt Mr. Moon 
and himself has ended in an invitation to dinner and a 
real friendship. " From antagonism we came to inter- 
" course; and one result of the controversy I cannot 
" regret — that it has enabled me to receive Mr. Moon as a 
" guest, and to regard him henceforward as my friend ". 
Will this deprive the public of the benefit of Mr. Moon's 
criticisms upon the present volume ? We should be sorry 
to think so ; for there really is much to be said about it, 
and, we fear, much fault to be found with it. Dean 
Alford has rendered good service to his generation. He 
was an exemplary working clergyman; and he is, we 
doubt not, as exemplary a Dean. He is an excellent poet, 
and his beautiful hymn, " Lo, the storms of life are break- 
"ing ", sung to sweet music, has often soothed our soul. 
We cannot call him an accomplished Greek scholar ; but 
he has compiled the most useful working Greek Testa- 
ment of our generation ; amenable to a thousand adverse 
criticisms, but laboriously bringing together almost all 
that working clergymen need. 

But with all this we cannot regard him as an authority 
on the philosophy of the English language, or as an 
example of its more accurate use. It is strange that men 
should imagine themselves to be that which they are so 
far from being, that they are unconscious even of their 
defects. Only a scholar of the widest philological read- 
ing and of the nicest discrimination should have pre- 
sumed to write a book on the use and abuse of the 



APPENDIX. 161 

Queen's English. No doubt Dean Alford thinks that he 
is such a scholar, and that his composition, if not in his 
ordinary sermons, yet in this volume, is faultless. We 
regret to be compelled to think otherwise. His style, 
where not positively ungrammatical, is loose, and flabby, 
and awkward ; his sentences are ungainly in construc- 
tion, and sometimes positively ludicrous in the meaning 
which they involuntarily convey. We will take a few in- 
stances ; and we begin with the third sentence in the book. 

" It [the term "Queen's English"] is one rather familiar 
" and conventional, than strictly accurate ". As Dean 
Alford uses it, the adverb " rather " qualifies the terms 
" familiar " and " conventional ". He means it to qualify 
the term " strictly accurate ", and should have said, " It 
is one familiar and conventional rather than strictly 
"accurate". 

"For language wants all these processes, as well as 
" roads do ", is scarcely as elegant as a critical Dean 
should have written. 

Again: "And it is by processes of this kind in the 
" course of centuries, that our English tongue has been 
" ever adapted ", &c. ; instead of " It is by processes of 
" this kind that, in the course of centuries, our English 
"tongue", &c. 

" Carefulness about minute accuracies of inflexion and 
" grammar may appear to some very contemptible ". We 
trust that the Dean is not one of these ; but would it not 
have been better to write, "may to some appear very 
" contemptible " ? 

" The other example is one familiar to you, of a more 
"solemn character": and what is it to those given to 
levity ? The Dean meant to say, " The other example is 
" of a more solemn character, and is one familiar to you". 

M 



162 APPENDIX. 

" The late Archdeacon Hare, in an article on English 
" orthography in the * Philological Museum 9 ". We did 
not know that the English orthography of the * Philolog- 
' iced Museum ' was peculiar, or needed an article. The 
Dean means "in an article in the 'Philological Museum 9 
" on English orthography ". 

" We do not follow rule in spelling the other words, 
"but custom". An elegant writer would have said, " In 
"spelling the other words we do not follow rule, but 
" custom ". 

These specimens occur in the first twelve pages ; how 
many the entire volume would afford, is beyond our cal- 
culation. 

With many of Dean Afford* s canons, both of deriva- 
tion and of pronunciation, and even of spelling, we have 
almost equal fault to find ; but we forbear. We must say, 
however, that, notwithstanding Mr. Latham's authority, 
and at the risk of being reckoned " grammarians of the 
" smaller sort ", we are still unconvinced of the propriety 
of saying, even colloquially, " It's me ", and of the 
pedantry of saying, " It's I ". 

We must add, too, that a somewhat unseemly egotism 
and gossipiness pervades the book — pardonable enough 
in popular lectures, but surely to be excluded from a 
philological treatise. The Dean seems to have no plan, 
but just to say anything that comes first, and to say it 
anyhow. Perhaps he thinks the chit-chat of a Dean 
sufficient for all persons of less dignity. 

Dean Alford, of course, says many just and use- 
ful things, and will, we trust, do something to correct 
some errors and vulgarisms. But it is one thing to 
read Dean Alford' s sentences, and it is another to read 
Macaulay's. 



APPENDIX, 16$ 

THE DEAN'S ENGLISH v. THE QUEEN'S 

ENGLISH. 

A Criticism erom The London Beview. 

A writer in the current number of * The Edinburgh 
' Review ' censures Mr. Moon for hypercritically objecting 
to sentences the meaning of which is perfectly clear, 
though it is possible, haying regard to the mere con- 
struction, to interpret them in a sense ludicrously false. 
We think that Mr. Moon does occasionally exhibit an 
excessive particularity; but many of his criticisms on 
Dr. Alford are, as the reviewer himself admits, thoroughly 
deserved. Because certain ambiguities have become 
recognised forms of speech, and are universally under- 
stood in the correct sense, a writer is not entitled to 
indulge in a lax mode of expression, which a little trouble 
would have rendered unimpeachable without any sacri- 
fice of ease, grace, or naturalness. The reviewer quotes, 
or imagines, two sentences to which no reasonable 
objection could be made, though the construction is 
assuredly not free from ambiguity : — " Jack was very 
" respectful to Tom, and always took off his hat when 
"he met him." "Jack was very rude to Tom, and 
" always knocked off his hat when he met him." Now, 
as a mere matter of syntax, it might be doubtful whether 
Jack did not show his respect to Tom by taking off 
Tom's hat, and his rudeness by knocking off his own ; 
but the fault is hardly a fault of construction — it is a 
fault inherent in the language itself, which has not 
provided for a distinction of personal pronouns. The 
sentences in question are clearly defective; but they 
could be amended only by an excessive verbosity and 
tautology, which would be much more objectionable; 

M 2 



164 APPENDIX. 

and, at any rate, they are no justification of those errors of 
composition which might easily be amended, and which 
spring from the "writer's own indolence or carelessness. 
The confusion of personal pronouns, however, is a 
subject worthy of comment. It is incidentally alluded 
to by a writer in the last number of ' The Quarterly 
' Review ', in an article on the report of the Public 
School Commissioners ; and a ludicrous example is given, 
from the evidence of a Somersetshire witness in a case 
of manslaughter, though, notwithstanding the jumble, 
the sense is clear enough. The fatal affray was thus 
described by the peasant : — " He'd a stick, and he'd a 
" stick, and he licked he, and he licked he ; and if he'd 
" a licked he as hard as he licked he, he'd a killed he, and 
" not he he." Now, supposing the witness not to know 
either combatant, one does not see how he could have 
expressed himself more clearly, and he would have a 
right to charge the defect on the language. Like every- 
thing else in the world, human speech is very imperfect, 
and we must sometimes take it with all its blemishes, 
because we can do no better. For instance, there is a 
certain form of expression which involves a downright 
impossibility, but which nevertheless is universally 
accepted. We cannot explain what we mean more perti- 
nently than by referring to the phrase commonly seen 
painted on dead walls and palings : — " Stick no bills." 
Here what is intended is a prohibition; but it really 
takes the form of an injunction, and of an injunction to 
do an impossibility. We are not told to refrain from 
sticking something, or anything — we are commanded to 
stick something, and the something we are to stick is 
" no bills " ! We are to stick on the wall or the paling 
something which has no existence. Let us try to 



APPENDIX. 165 

imagine the process. We must first take up the nonen- 
tity in one hand, and with the other apply paste to its 
non-existent back ; we are then to hoist it on a pole, and 
flatten it against a wall. Of course, the only correct 
expression would be, "Do not stick bills"; yet no one 
would seriously recommend the change. (The reader 
will observe that we have here unconsciously fallen into 
the same mode of speech. "No one would recommend"!) 
The received expression is more succinct, and it has now 
the sanction of time. In like manner we say, " He was 
" so vexed that he ate no dinner ", and a hundred other 
phrases of the same character. But they are radically 
bad, and go far to excuse the uneducated for so frequently 
using the double negative. The unlettered man knows 
that he wants to state the negation of something, and not 
the affirmation, and he obscurely perceives that a species 
of affirmation of the very thing he wants to deny is put 
into his mouth by such a sentence as, "He ate no dinner"; 
so he whips in another negative, and really makes the 
phrase more intelligible to himself, and to those of his 
own class who hear him. 

Let us conclude with a hope that Dean Alford and Mr. 
Moon have by this time made up their quarrel, and that 
henceforth they will unite their forces for the defence of 
' The Queen's English \ 



A PLEA FOE THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 

A Criticism from The North American Quarterly 
Eeyiew. 

It may seem late to undertake the criticism of a book 
the second edition of which has been already some time 
before the public. But the first edition, which appeared 



166 APPENDIX. 

a few years since (in 1863), although not passing without 
some slight notice in our literary journals, attained no 
American circulation, and made no impression upon our 
community. The enterprise of the publisher has suc- 
ceeded in procuring for the work in its new form so wide 
a currency among us, and in attracting to it so much 
attention, that it becomes worth while seriously to inquire 
into its merits, and to estimate its right to be accepted 
as an authority; and this, as much for the sake of 
challenging a popularity and consideration which may 
turn out to be undeserved, as from regard to the good or 
the harm which the book is likely to do ; for it makes no 
great pretensions to a wide scope, or to philosophic 
method and profundity. It styles itself " Stray Notes on 
"Speaking and Spelling" and is composed of desultory 
and loosely connected remarks on errors and controverted 
points in orthography, orthoepy, and grammar, and was 
written in part, as its author takes pains to inform us, at 
chance moments of leisure, in cars and eating-houses and 
other such places. Criticism, it is plain, should not be 
disarmed by such acknowledgments, since no man, who 
cannot make his odd thoughts fully worth our acceptance, 
has a right to thrust them before us. The ' Stray Notes ' 
grew by degrees into their present form. They were put 
together first into lectures, and then became a series of 
articles in a monthly magazine. These attracted much 
notice, and called out abundant correspondence and com- 
ment, so that the successive papers took on a shape in 
part controversial and replicatory. The same was their fate 
after their collection into a volume ; and the second edition 
is not a little altered from the first, under the process of 
criticism and reply. They have had, it will be seen, a rather 
peculiar history, calculated to provoke our curiosity. 



APPENDIX. 167 

The author is an English divine, of considerable note 
as critical editor and commentator of the Greek text of 
the New Testament, and has also acquired some fame in 
his earlier years as a writer of verses. We should natur- 
ally, then, explain to ourselves the popularity which the 
work has won, by the critical and scholarly ability and 
the elegant style it is found to display. Such qualities, 
added to the general and attractive interest of the sub- 
jects, ought to be enough to insure a notable career to 
even a heavier volume. It is unfortunate, however, for 
the American student, who is desirous to draw from this 
source valuable instruction as to the best usage of his 
mother-tongue, that he finds himself repelled, almost at 
the start, by a violent ebullition of spite against his 
native country. The reverend author, namely, is engaged 
in magnifying his office as polisher of the habits of speech 
of English speakers, by showing the exceeding and deep- 
reaching importance of attention to niceties of diction; 
and he holds up Americans to reprobation for "the 
" character and history of the nation, its blunted sense 
" of moral obligation and duty to man, its open disregard 
"of conventional right where aggrandizement is to be 
" obtained, and, I may now say, its reckless and fruitless 
" maintenance of the most cruel and unprincipled war in 
"the history of the world." (p. 6.) This, it is true, was 
written before Lee's surrender. Since the end of 1864 
we have changed all that; and, in our zeal after self- 
improvement, we can well afford to pardon a few hard 
words to a " dignitary of the Church of England," who 
has given his ardent sympathies to the cause of Secession 
and Slavery, provided only he shall make good his claim 
to be our instructor in his proper department. Still, we 
cannot but form the suspicion that our author is some- 



168 APPENDIX. 

what under the dominion of class and national prejudices, 
and either careless of seeking information as to subjects 
upon which he is very ready to offer his opinion, or not 
acute in judging and profiting by information obtained. 
And further, it cannot but seriously shake our confidence 
in his philological acumen to find that our dreadful ex- 
ample is intended to "serve to show" the horrified British 
nation "that language is no trifle"! Our astonished 
inquiries into the connection of such a warning with such 
a lesson bring us to see that the Dean attributes our 
viciousness to the infelicities of our speech, since "every 
"important feature in a people's language is reflected in 
"its character and history." We had always thought, it 
must be owned, that the " reflection " was in the opposite 
direction: that character and history determined language. 
It is perhaps allowable to say, by a kind of figure, that 
a man's image in the glass is reflected in his person; 
and it is certain that, if we can make the image tran- 
scendently lovely, the man himself will be sure to turn 
out a beauty ; only we cannot well reach the image save 
through the man himself. In like manner, if we can 
train the masses of a people to speak elegantly, doubtless 
we shall change their character vastly for the better ; but 
the improvement will be only in a very subordinate 
degree due to the reflex action of language: it will 
rather be the direct effect of the process of education. 

Our suspicions of the soundness of our philological 
authority, thus aroused, are not precisely lulled to sleep 
by an examination of the other incentives he offers to 
exactness of speech. We are pointed to the example of 
the Apostle Peter, when accused by the bystanders of 
being a Galilean, on the ground of his Galilean dialect. 
"So that," says our author, "the fact of a provincial 



APPENDIX. 169 

"pronunciation was made use of to bring about the 
" repentance of an erring Apostle." It is not easy to see 
the point of the argumenb here made. One might rather 
be tempted to infer that a provincial pronunciation is a 
good thing, and deserves encouragement, if it could be- 
come the means of so important a conversion; who knows 
but that our own local idioms, carefully nursed and duly 
displayed, may somehow be made to work out our salva- 
tion ? But there is a worse difficulty behind ; and really, 
if Mr. Alford were not a Dean and an editor of the New 
Testament text, we should be inclined to accuse him of 
neglecting his Bible. According to the received reading 
of the Evangelists, (we have not examined Dean Alford' s 
edition,) the charge brought against the saint that he did 
not talk good Jerusalem Hebrew, had for its sole effect to 
draw from him a repetition of his former lying denial, 
along with a volley of oaths and curses (luckless Peter ! 
he forgot that his native dialect would only show more 
distinctly in such an outbreak of passion); and it was the 
crowing of the cock that brought about his repentance. 
So that, after all, the lesson we learn must be that, if we 
will only repress our local peculiarities of speech, we 
shall be less exposed to being detected in our wickedness; 
or else, that we must beware of accusing any one of dia- 
lectic inaccuracies, lest thereby we drive him to greater 
enormity of sin. Our author has perverted, without 
appreciable gain, a text which would not bend to his 
purpose in its true form. 

We are now tempted to examine the other case in this 
department, cited by the Dean, and see whether it will not, 
perhaps, give us a higher idea of his qualifications as a 
critic of language. He speaks (p. 7 seq.) of the spurious 
poems of Eowley as having been in part detected by their 



170 APPENDIX. 

containing the word its, — a word which was not in good 
use in Rowley's time. So far, all is well. But then he 
goes on to discourse concerning the infrequency of its in 
early English, and the employment of Ms for it, evidently 
in total ignorance of the reason, namely, that Ms was in 
Anglo-Saxon, and hence also for a long time in English, 
the regular genitive case of it (A. S. Mt), not less than of 
he; and that the introduction of its was a popular in- 
accuracy, a grammatical blunder, such as the introduction 
of she 9 s for her would be now. To the general appre- 
hension, his stood in the usual relation of a possessive 
case, formed by an added 's to he, and had nothing to do 
with it; and so, popular use manufactured a new regular 
possessive for it, which was finally, after a protracted 
struggle, received into cultivated and literary styles, and 
made good English. Hear, on the other hand, our 
author's explanation of the rarity of its during the period 
from Shakespeare to Milton : " The reason, I suppose, 
" being, that possession, indicated by the possessive case 
" its, seemed to imply a certain life or personality, which 
" things neuter could hardly be thought of as having." 
A more fantastic and baseless suggestion is rarely made ; 
it is so empty of meaning that we can hardly forbear to 
call it silly. There was not at that period a neuter noun 
in the language that did not form a possessive in 's with 
perfect freedom. Who can fancy Shakespeare doubting 
whether a table, as well as a horse or a man, really had or 
possessed legs; or as being willing to say "a table's 
" legs," but questioning the propriety of " a table on its 
"legs "? or how were the Bible translators avoiding the 
ascription of possession to things inanimate by talking 
of "the candlestick, his shaft and his branch," and so 
forth, instead of " its shaft and its branch " ? 



APPENDIX. 171 

If these, then, are fair specimens of our author's 
learning and method, we must expect to find his book 
characterized by ignorance of the history of English 
speech, inaccuracy, loose and unsound reasoning, and 
weakness of linguistic insight. And we are constrained 
to acknowledge that such expectations will be abundantly 
realized in the course of a further perusal of the work. 
Let us cite a few more specimens. 

Perhaps the most striking example we can select of the 
Dean's want of knowledge on philological subjects is his 
treatment of the word neighbor. "This," he says (p. 12), 
" has come from the German naclibar I " but he adds in 
a foot-note that the derivation has been questioned ; that 
a Danish correspondent thinks it should be referred to 
the Danish or Norse nabo ; and he has himself chanced 
to observe " that the dictionaries derive it from the 
"Anglo-Saxon nehyebur." He does not venture to judge of 
a matter of such intricacy, and simply leaves in the text 
his original etymology from the German. This is very 
much as if we were to be in doubt whether to trace a 
friend's descent from his grandfather, or from one or 
other of his second-cousins, finally inclining to a certain 
cousin, because with him we ourselves happened to be 
also somewhat acquainted. Certainly one who can dis- 
play such ignorance of the first principles of English 
etymology ought to be condemned to hold his peace for 
ever on all questions concerning the English language. 

The case is the same wherever a knowledge of the 
history of English words ought to be made of avail in 
discussing and deciding points of varying usage. Thus, 
when inquiring (p. 46 seq.) whether we ought to say a 
historian or an historian, and instancing the Bible use 
of an before initial h in almost all cases, he omits to point 



172 APPENDIX. 

out that an is the original form, once used before both 
consonants and vowels, and that, when it came by degrees 
to be dropped before consonants, for the sake of a more 
rapid and easy utterance, it maintained itself longest 
before the somewhat equivocal aspiration, h. He is right, 
we think, in not regarding the rule for using an before 
the initial h of an unaccented syllable as a peremptory 
one. The better reason is on the side of the more popular 
colloquial usage ; if the h of historian, like that of history, 
is to be really pronounced, made audible, a ought properly 
to stand before it, as before the other. But no Biblical 
support can make of such a combination as an hero aught 
but the indefensible revival of an antique and discarded 
way of speaking. 

So, also, Dean Alford (p. 48) fails to see and to point 
out that, in the antiquated phrase such an one, we have a 
legacy from the time when one had not yet acquired its 
anomalous pronunciation wun, but was sounded one (as it 
still is in its compounds only, alone, atone, etc.) As we 
now utter the word, such an one is not less absurd and 
worthy of summary rejection from usage than would be 
such an wonder. 

The discussion, again, of "better than J" or "better 
"than me" is carried on (p. 152 seq.) without an allusion 
to the fact that than is historically an adverb only, the 
same word with then, and has no hereditary right to 
govern an accusative, as if it were a preposition. "He is 
"better than X" is, by origin, "he is better, then I," — that 
is to say, "I next after him." Linguistic usage has, 
indeed, a perfect right to turn the adverbial construction 
into a prepositional ; but, as the former is still in almost 
every case not only admissible, but more usual, the 
tendency to convert the word into a preposition is not 



APPENDIX. 173 

one to be encouraged, but rather, and decidedly, the 
contrary. 

It might be deemed unfair to blame our author for his 
equally faulty discussion of the question between the 
two forms of locution, "it is Z" and "it is me" because 
his correspondents and the correspondents of some of 
the English literary journals (which have been the arena 
of a controversy upon the subject much more ardent 
than able, within no long time past) are just as far as he 
is from doing themselves credit in connection with it. 
What he cites from Latham, and (in a note) from Ellis, 
is tolerably pure twaddle. It may well enough be that 
" it is me " is now already so firmly established in collo- 
quial usage, and even in written, that the attempt to oust 
it will be in vain ; but the expression is none the less in 
its origin a simple blunder, a popular inaccuracy. It is 
neither to be justified nor palliated by theoretical con- 
siderations, — as by alleging a special predicative con- 
struction, or by citing French and Danish parallels. 
There was a time when to say "us did it" for "we did it," 
" them did it" for " they did it," was just as correct as to 
say " you did it " for "ye did it "; but usage, to which we 
must all bow as the only and indisputable authority in 
language, has ratified the last corruption and made it 
good English, while rejecting the other two. He would 
be a pedant who should insist in these days that we 
ought to say ye instead of you in the nominative ; but he 
would also have been worthy of ridicule who, while the 
change was in progress, should have supported it on the 
ground of a tendency to the subjective use of the accu- 
sative, and cited in its favor the example of the Italian 
Zoro, "them," for elleno, "they," as plural of respectful 
address. And as long as it is still vulgar to say " it is 



174 APPENDIX. 

"him," "it is her," "it is us," 9 "it is them," and still 
proper and usual to say " it is I," our duty as favorers of 
good English requires us to oppose and discountenance 
" it is me," with the rest of its tribe, as all alike regret- 
able and avoidable solecisms. 

Of course the Dean puts his veto (p. 253) upon reliable; 
men of his stamp always do. He alleges the staple argu- 
ment of his class, that rely-upon-able would be the only 
legitimate form of such a derivative from rely. They 
ought fairly to put the case somewhat thus : " It is un- 
" account-for-able, not to say laugh- at- able, that men will 
" try to force upon the language a word so take-objection- 
" to-able, so little avail- of- able, and so far from indispense- 
" with-able, as reliable"; then we should see more clearly 
how much the plea is worth. 

Of course, again, our author sets his face like flint 
against writing or instead of our at the end of such words 
as honor and favor ; and that upon the high and com- 
manding consideration that to simplify the termination 
thus "is part of a movement to reduce our spelling to 
"uniform rule as opposed to usage" (p. 10); that it "is 
"an approach to that wretched attempt to destroy all 
" the historic interest of our language, which is known 
"by the name of phonetic spelling" (p. 14), — and upon 
the phonetic movement he proceeds to pour out the vials 
of his ponderous wit and feeble denunciation. On the 
whole, we think the phonetists are to be congratulated on 
having the Dean for an adversary ; his hostility is more 
a credit to them than would be his support. There are a 
host of difficulties in the way of the phonetic spellers 
which they themselves, or many of them, are far from 
appreciating ; but they are not of the kind which Mr. 
Alford seeks to raise. ]STo one wants to set up rule 



APPENDIX, 175 

against usage, but only to change usage from a bad rule 
to a good one. And our language has a store of historic 
interest which would not be perceptibly trenched upon, 
even if we were to take the liberty of writing our words 
just as we speak them. Our present spelling is of the 
nature of a great and long-established institution, so in- 
timately bound up with the habits and associations of 
the community that it is well-nigh, or quite, impreg- 
nable. But a philologist ought to be ashamed to defend 
it on principle, on theoretical grounds. He, at any rate, 
ought to know that a mode of writing is no proper re- 
pository for interesting historical reminiscences ; that an 
alphabetic system has for its office simply and solely to 
represent faithfully a spoken language, and is perfect in 
proportion as it fulfils that office, without attempting to 
do also the duty of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese 
ideographs. 'No other so great linguistic blessing could 
be conferred upon the English language and the people 
who speak it as a consistent phonetic orthography. 

It is calculated profoundly to stagger our faith in 
Dean Alford's capacity as an interpreter and expositor 
of difficult texts to find him guilty of explaining (p. 105) 
the reflexive verb to endeavor one's self by " to consider 
"one's self in duty bound," and of asserting that this 
"appears clearly" from the answer made by the candi- 
date for ordination to the bishop's exhortation to diligence 
in prayer and other holy exercises, " I will endeavor my- 
"self so to do, the Lord being my helper." Not only 
does this answer exact no such interpretation of the 
phrase as the one given by the Dean, but it even directly 
and obviously suggests the true meaning, " to exert one's 
" self, to do one's endeavor." 

A similar paucity of insight is exhibited in our author's 



176 APPENDIX. 

theory (p. 86), that the origin of the double comparative 
lesser, for less, is to be traced to the " attraction " of the 
dissyllabic word greater, with which it is not infrequently 
found connected in use. No such effect of attraction as 
this, we are sure, can be found in any part of our English 
speech. The true reason of the form is not hard to 
discover : it lies in the extension of a prevailing analogy 
to one or two exceptional cases. Less and worse are the 
only comparatives in our language which do not end in 
r ; and er is accordingly so distinctly present to the 
apprehension of the language-users as a sign of compara- 
tive meaning that they have gone on, naturally enough, 
to apply it to those two also, thus assimilating them to 
the rest of their class. The only difference in the result 
is, that lesser has been fully adopted, in certain connec- 
tions, into good usage, while worser is still a vulgarism. 

ISTor can we ascribe any greater merit to the Dean's 
treatment of the preposition on to, or onto, used to de- 
note motion, as distinguished from locality or place, 
denoted by the simple preposition on : thus, " The cat 
"jumped on to the table, and danced about on the table." 
Such a distinction, as every one knows, is often made in 
colloquial style, but is not yet, and perhaps may never 
be, admitted in good writing ; this tolerates only on. Our 
author is not content with denying that on to is now 
good writable English ; he tries to make out there is no 
reason or propriety in attempting to express any such 
difference of relation as is signified by the two separate 
forms. His argument is this: if we say, "The cat jumped 
on the table," or if the tired school -boy, begging a lift on 
his way, gets from the coachman the permission, "All 
"right, jump on the box," will there be any danger of a 
failure to understand what is meant ? Of course not, we 



APPENDIX. Ill 

reply; but neither should we fail to understand, "The 
" dog jumped in the water, and brought out the stick"; 
nor would Tom be slow in taking, and acting on, coachee's 
meaning, if the reply were, " Jump in the carriage." The 
question is not one of mere intelligibility, but of the 
desirableness of giving formal expression to a real differ- 
ence of relation, — as we have actually done in the case 
of in and into. On to, says our author (p. 181), is not so 
good English as into, "because on is ordinarily a pre- 
" position of motion as well as of rest, whereas in is 
"almost entirely a preposition of rest." This is an 
amusing inversion of the real relations of the case : in 
fact, in is a preposition of rest only, because we have 
into in good usage as the corresponding preposition of mo- 
tion; on is obliged to be both, because onto has not won 
its way to general acceptance. The double form would 
be just as proper and just as expressive in the one case 
as in the other, and there is no good reason why we 
should not heartily wish that onto were as unexception- 
able English as is into, whether we believe or not that it 
will ever become so, and whether or not we are disposed 
to take the responsibility of joining to make it so. Every 
German scholar knows how nice and full of meaning are 
the distinctions made in the German language, as re- 
gards these two and a few other prepositions, by the use 
after them of a dative to denote locality, and an accusa- 
tive to denote motion. The Anglo-Saxon was able to 
accomplish the same object by the same means; but we 
have, in losing our dative case, lost the power to do so, 
and have only partially made up the loss, by coining, 
during the modern period, such secondary words as into 
and onto, that they may bear a part of the office of in 
and on. 



178 APPENDIX. 

We will barely allude to one or two more instances of 
a like character : such as our author's conjecture (p. 67) 
that our separation of manifold in pronunciation from 
many is due to the influence of its felt analogy with 
manifest; his attempt (p. 91) to find an etymological 
reason for the translation, " Our Father which art in 
"heaven," instead of "who art"; his theory (p. 42) that 
the conjunction of the two words " humble and hearty " 
in the Prayer-Book is good ground for holding that the 
first as well as the second was pronounced with an 
aspirated h; his apparent assumption (p. 25) that the 's 
of senator's represent the Latin is of senatoris (or is it 
only his confused expression that is to blame here?), — 
and so forth. 

These are but the more prominent and striking illus- 
trations of Dean Alford's general method. We may say 
without exaggeration that — especially in the first half of 
the book, where questions are more often dealt with 
that include historical considerations and call for some 
scholarship — there is hardly a single topic brought under 
discussion which is treated in a thorough and satisfactory 
manner, in creditable style and spirit : even where we 
are agreed with respect to our author's conclusions, he 
repels us by a superficial, or an incomplete, or a prejudiced, 
or a blundering statement of the reasons that should 
guide us to them. It is almost an impertinence in one 
so little versed in English studies to attempt to teach his 
countrymen how they ought to speak. 

The last half of the work deals prevailingly with syn- 
tactical points, requiring to be argued rather upon 
rhetorical than grammatical grounds. But, though in 
a measure exempt from the class of criticisms which we 
have found occasion to make above, it is not without its 



APPENDIX. 179 

own faults. The dean's chief hobby throughout is the 
depreciation of " laws," whether of the rhetorician or 
of the grammarian, and the exaltation of " usage " as 
opposed to them. He has, of course, a certain right on 
his side, yet not precisely as he understands it. The laws 
he rejects are only meant to stand as expressions of good 
usage ; nor do those who set them up arrogate to them 
peremptory and universal force, but rather a value as 
guiding principles, attention to which will save, from 
many faults, the less wary and skilful. No one holds 
that he who has not native capacity and educated taste 
can become by their aid an elegant writer ; no one denies 
that he who has capacity and taste may cast them to the 
winds, sure that his own sense of what is right will lead 
him to clear and forcible expression. But we have all 
heard of a class of people who inveigh against "laws," 
and would fain escape judgment by them ; and the very 
vigor of the Dean's recalcitrations inspires us with suspi- 
cions that there may be good cause for his uneasiness. 
And so it is : he has not in any eminent degree that fine 
sense which enables one to write without rule a pure and 
flowing English. His style is always heavy and ungrace- 
ful, and often marked with infelicities and even with 
inaccuracies. As many of our readers are aware, he has 
received on this score a terrible scathing from Mr. Moon, 
in a little work happily entitled " The Dean's English" 
by way of answer to " The Queen's English." To 
this we refer any one who may be curious to see, 
properly exposed, the other side of the Dean's claim to 
set himself up as a critic of good English. The professed 
general views he puts forth are in no small part special 
pleadings, rather, against the criticisms of his censors. 
He appears to suppose that any somewhat inaccurate or 

n2 



180 APPENDIX. 

slovenly phrase or construction of his for which he can 
find parallels in our Bible translation and in Shakespeare 
is thereby hallowed and made secure against attack, un- 
mindful that our style of expression has in many points 
tended towards precision and nicety during the last 
centuries, so that not everything which was allowed in 
Shakespeare's time will be tolerated now; and further, 
and more especially, that great writers may be pardoned 
in taking now and then liberties which, if ventured on by 
little men, like him and ourselves, will be justly visited 
with reprobation. 

It is our opinion, therefore, upon the whole, that the 
English- speaking public would have lost little had our 
author's lucubrations been confined to the " Church of 
England Young Men's Literary Association," for which 
they were originally intended, and which doubtless re- 
ceived them with unquestioning faith, and had he never 
brought them out where Dissenters and other irreverent 
outsiders should carp at them. The circulation and 
credit they have won in this country are mainly a reflec- 
tion of the unusual attention which has been paid them 
in England; and the latter is partly fortuitous, the 
result of a combination of favoring circumstances, partly 
due to the general interest felt in the subject of the work, 
and a curiosity to hear what a man of high position and 
repute for scholarship has to say upon it ; and in part it 
is an indication of the general low state of philological 
culture in the British Isles. We cannot wish " The 
" Queen's English " a continued currency, unless it be 
understood and received by all for just what it is, — a 
simple expression of the views and prejudices of a single 
educated Englishman respecting matters of language ; 
having, doubtless, a certain interest and value as such, 



APPENDIX. 181 

but possessing no more authority than would belong to a 
like expression on the part of any one among thousands 
of its readers. Its true character is that of a sample of 
private opinion, and not a guide and model of general 
usage. 

THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 

A Criticism froii 'The Phonetic Journal.' 

If, as some good people hold, everybody and everything is 
created, not merely for a general, but moreover for some 
specific, purpose, then we might infer that the particular 
use to which Nature destined the Dean of Canterbury 
was to set himself up to lecture upon the Queen's English, 
and so to offer himself as a conspicuous mark, and a 
defenceless victim, to the scathing criticism and merciless 
exposure of Mr. Gr. Washington Moon. Not for many 
years, have we seen such a brilliant and effective passage 
of arms, as is contained in the little book under notice, 
which consists principally of three letters addressed to 
Dr. Alford, To say, that the poor Dean is worsted in the 
encounter, is to say very little. His defeat is almost too 
complete. Like an untrained youth, in the grasp of an 
athlete, he never has even a chance. At every round, he 
is quickly thrown ; and the blows, given with a will, and 
planted with a precision and vigour, which no feint can 
elude, fall fast and heavily on his defenceless head. At 
every point, the Dean is confronted by his pertinacious 
and inexorable assailant, who leaves him no possibility of 
escape; or, if he does occasionally attempt a feeble de- 
fence, it only serves to bring down upon himself still 
severer punishment, until, exhausted by the encounter, 
he does that, which, for his own sake, he had better have 



182 APPENDIX. 

done at first — makes peace with his adversary while yet 
he is in the way with him. 

To set one's self up for a teacher of English, pure and 
undefiled; jauntily to ascend the rostrum, as one gifted 
with authority to lay down the whole law ; and then to 
be met with such a withering exposure of incompetence, 
with such inevitable inferences of imbecility, as consti- 
tute the staple of Mr. Moon's book; for the physician, 
who gratuitously obtrudes his advice upon us, and vaunts 
his ability to cure our disorder, — for him to be convicted 
of labouring under a virulent form of the same disease, 
certainly this is not a pleasant position for a man to 
occupy, and we heartily commiserate the unfortunate 
Dean. 

Even in the fair field of criticism he is quite unable to 
cope with his skilful and alert adversary. ]STever was 
there a more conspicuous instance of going out to shear, 
and coming home shorn. For our own part, we would 
rather have submitted to a month's stone-breaking than 
have called down upon ourselves such withering sarcasms 
and incisive irony as Dr. Alford's language has so justly 
provoked. 

To those who are interested in speaking and writing 
good English, — and what educated person is not ? — this 
book is fall of instruction; and to those who enjoy a 
controversy, conducted with consummate skill, and in 
excellent taste by a strong man, well armed, it is such a 
treat as does not fall in one's way often during a life-time. 
Eegarded in itself, and without any immediate reference 
to its object, this book affords a model of • correct and 
elegant English ; such as is a perfect treat to meet with, 
in these days of slip- shod writing. Perspicuous, com- 
pact and nervous in its construction, it is by no means 



APPENDIX. 183 

deficient in some of the higher and more brilliant quali- 
ties of style ; while, for refined sarcasm and covert irony, 
it has rarely been equalled. We can assure our readers 
that a pleasanter or more profitable employment than the 
perusal of this book, it would be difficult to recommend to 
them. As the subject is not of an ephemeral nature, though 
the book itself was called forth by a passing occasion, we 
hope to see the public interest in the work wax, rather 
than wane, and that still more editions may yet be called 
for. Every copy that is circulated is so much good seed 
sown broadcast, — so much seed of tares smothered in its 
growth. 

Many of our public writers, highly educated, and per- 
haps because they have been so educated, undertake 
English composition as if it were the one exceptional art 
which required no rule but the "rule of thumb." To 
such, the lamentable fiasco of the Dean, owing to his dis- 
regard of rules, should be a lesson, but, too probably, will 
not. We cannot help wishing that a writer who is so 
eminently qualified as Mr. Moon to teach a subject which, 
just now, so greatly needs to be taught, and who illus- 
trates so admirably by his example the precepts that he 
so clearly enforces, would devote himself to the task of 
drawing up a code of rules for composition, such as our 
journalists and periodical writers might appeal to, as a 
standard for correct English. We are of opinion that 
there is a crying want of such a work, that it would be 
one of the most useful and most popular works of the 
day, and that Mr. Moon, with his thorough mastery of the 
subject, with his keen perception, nice judgment, and 
pellucid and elegant style, is just the person to write it. 
When a man displays peculiar aptitudes, and of a high 
order, for a given subject, we grieve, we almost resent it, 



184 APPENDIX. 

if our natural expectations should remain unfulfilled. 
We feel that to be defeated of our hopes is, in some 
sense, to be defrauded of our rights. "We think we have 
a right to call upon Mr. Moon, now that he has once exhi- 
bited this shining talent, not to wrap it up again in a 
napkin, but to put it out to interest, and we have no 
doubt of its bringing him back most abundant returns. 
We entertain this opinion notwithstanding Mr. Moon's 
disclaimer that "very little can be added to the canons of 
" criticism already laid down ; though very much may be 
" done for the permanent enriching of our language, by 
"popular writers using more care as to the examples 
"they set in composition, than as to the lessons they 
" teach concerning it," It is precisely because Mr. Moon 
teaches so well by example, that we would fain have him 
make this example the vehicle for the inculcation of pre- 
cepts, and the execution of the work the best comment 
upon, and illustration of, its rules. The public ear is 
prepared to listen to him, and rarely do such an occasion, 
and such an opportunity of earning and of deserving an 
enduring reputation, fall to the lot of any man, as those 
which now lie within the reach of Mr. Moon. 



THE END. 



By the same Author. 

Just published, in one volume, square 8vo„ toned paper, with engraved frontispiece, from 
an original drawing, of the Translation of Elijah. 

Price 3s. 6d. 

ELIJAH THE PROPHET: 

A POEM. 

By G. WASHINGTON MOON, F.R.S.L. 

THIRD EDITION. 



Extracts from Reviews. 



Court Journal. 



Her Majesty has graciously been pleased to accept a 
copy of Mr. Washington Moon's poem, " Elijah the 
" Prophet." 

"We have long been aware that Mr. Washington Moon 
was an acute and discriminating critic, but we were 
ignorant up to the present that he was possessed of high 
poetic genius. In his Elijah the Prophet he has produced 
an epic poem of great merit, exhibiting powers rarely 
equalled for sublimity and strength, and breathing a 
noble and an elevated spirit which deserves all prj 



186 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 

Weekly Kecord. 
It is an epic poem of great beauty and power. 



Christian Examinee. 
It is a poem worthy of the subject and of the author. 



Bookseller. 






" Elijah the Prophet " is the most noticeable poem of 
the season. It is poetical in the true sense of the term. 



Ereeman, 



It is full of quiet beauty, and is specially remarkable 
for elegance of diction and purity of language. 



Evangelical Christendom. 

The poem is one of unusual interest and beauty. It will 
find favour chiefly with persons of refined and cultivated 
taste, who can appreciate the nicer elegancies of com- 
position. 

Public Opinion. 

Mr. Moon must be congratulated on having made a 
contribution to sacred minstrelsy of which all religious 
classes ought to be proud. He has produced a sacred 
poem alike honourable to his heart and to his head, for 
it reflects genuine piety and poetic genius. 



London Quarterly Review. 

Mr. Moon has taught the Dean of Canterbury some 
lessons which he certainly ought not to have needed, but 



EXTBACTS FROM REVIEWS. 187 

as certainly did need ; and he has, at the same time, in- 
structed many besides. Mr. Moon, however, can not only 
lay down the laws of good prose composition ; he is 
himself an example of something more than poetic sus- 
ceptibility and culture. In this beautiful volume there 
are many sweet thoughts and tender touches, and many 
highly finished passages. 



British Standard. 

Mr. Moon has already attained for himself a good de- 
gree by his slashing criticism of "The Dean's English." 
— that is, the English of Dean Alford. Although we have 
not found it convenient to take any extended notice of 
those crushing criticisms, we, nevertheless, read them 
with pleasure, and often with admiration. They did ex- 
cellent service to the cause of good writing, and showed 
that even a Dean, and that Dean a man of genius, litera- 
ture, and culture, may yet, while correcting others, fall 
into the most egregious blunders himself. The strictures 
of Mr. Moon were of more service to the Dean than all 
that he received from university lectures on English 
literature. 

But, while pondering and enjoying those brilliant and 
scarifying contributions, we had no idea that the author 
was addicted to verse. Here, however, he appears before 
the public in a very splendid quarto volume, the subject 
of which is Elijah the Prophet, one of the most renowned 
of the wonderful class of men to which he belonged. 
While the subject is quite suited to poetry, it is, never- 
theless, one of a very arduous character ; but Mr. Moon 
is equal to great things, and is not afraid to grapple with 
them. There is much noble thought here, set forth in 



188 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 

correct and brilliant diction. We are, indeed somewhat 
surprised that a gentleman of such ability in poetry has 
not written much more. The whole is nobly thought and 
marked by the dignity the subject demands. 



North British Daily Mail. 

The readers of " Good Words " will doubtless recognise 
in the name of Mr. Moon one with which they have 
already become acquainted. The lovers of English litera- 
ture also will hear again the name of a champion in their 
cause. 

The subsequent works of so bold and successful a critic 
of the language of a distinguished teacher could not fail 
to have a severe trial to stand for their own merits, and 
thus a volume of " Minor Poems " by Mr. Moon passed 
"through the fire;" with the result, however, of the 
more firmly establishing the author's fame as an accom- 
plished and scholarly writer. 

The present poem, " Elijah," is well calculated to add 
another laurel to Mr. Moon's reputation. The grandeur 
of the subject is well-nigh unsurpassed, and perhaps the 
highest praise which could be bestowed on the poem is 
that it is not unworthy of the subject. 

The language is eminently simple, but, by its very 
simplicity, is commanding. Lofty thought and poetic 
imagination grace each page ; while, pervading all, and 
permeating each varied stanza and melodious canto, 
there breathes an earnest spirit of deep-toned piety, and 
a personal knowledge of, and delight in God as "love", 
which seems to hallow all and harmonize each note into 
a chord of praise struck by a filial hand to the name of 
" the Father." 



EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 189 

It is not easy to give, from a poem describing the his- 
torical events of a considerable period, an extract which 
will fittingly represent the poem itself; bnt the elegance 
as well as the power of description which belongs to Mr. 
Moon's language may be gathered from almost any part 
of " Elijah." 

Christian News. 
Mr. Moon needs no introduction to those in any way 
acquainted with English literature. The feature of his 
poem which will appear most striking to many readers is 
the simplicity and purity of its diction. Mr. Moon has 
aimed at using simple terms, and he has accomplished 
his task in a manner rarely equalled, certainly never sur- 
passed. We question if there is anything more free from 
what may be called literary foppery within the compass of 
the English language. In the whole poem there is not a 
word which a child may not understand; and there is 
not a sentence which is in the slightest degree perplexed; 
and yet, notwithstanding its simplicity of expression, it 
is as far as possible from being puerile. There is a mas- 
culineness about it which indicates that the thoughts are 
those of a strong, stalwart mind; a mind not in any 
degree gross \ but one, which, while it takes a firm grasp 
of material things, can relinquish that grasp at pleasure, 
and rise to the contemplation of the immaterial. 



Edinburgh Daily Review. 
There is evident, throughout, a remarkable command 
of language ; but we attribute the unquestionable success 
of the epic to the devoutness of the mind which has con- 
ceived it, as well as to the imaginative faculty with which 
Ihe author is so richly endowed. 



190 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS, 

Oxford University Herald. 
In this work the library has one of the most valuable 
additions that has for many years emanated from the 
press. Grift ed with a master-mind, — imaginative, penetra- 
tive, refined, and modest withal, — the anthor of this poem 
has thrown the full force of his powers of expression into 
the accomplishment of a great end, namely, the effective 
rendering with the aid of poetry of one of the most 
sublime records of the Old Testament. 



News oe the World. 
The subject of this epic is one of such surpassing 
grandeur and sublimity, that we confess to having 
opened the book with some doubt and misgiving; but 
we had not read far before we were satisfied that the 
author had not miscalculated his powers, and that his 
poem was worthy of high praise. 



St. James's Chronicle. 
The author has not only the attributes and qualifica 
tions of a poet in the true and highest sense, but a rare 
amount of varied knowledge which he brings in the 
happiest manner to bear on the grand heads of his sub- 
ject. We have not perused a volume of poetry for many 
a day that possesses so many attractive features. The 
book is one series of beautiful and brilliant gems and 
profound thoughts, set in pure and ornate language. 






Court Circular. 

This is a bold attempt by an able man. His work is one 
of considerable merit. Hitherto, Isaiah has furnished a 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 191 

favourite subject for translation ; but here is certainly a 
grander subject, and it has been handled with so much 
strength and energy that the author deserves much 
praise. He has succeeded in giving us a work that may 
stand in a high place among the specimens of modern 
English classical literature. It is not perfect; but we 
cannot point to any living writer who could with cer- 
tainty have done it better. 



The Atlas. 



Amongst the most difficult of literary undertakings 
must be considered the composition of a sacred epic. 
The only real successes in this field are the Paradise 
Lost and Eegained of Milton. And the very signal infe- 
riority of the latter to the former shows more decidedly 
than anything else, that not even to the highest genius is 
it vouchsafed to compose at will a sacred epic absolutely 
beyond rivalry. The French have never had sufficient 
reverence to undertake the task at all. Italy has never 
known the Bible well enough even to have the task sug- 
gested to its men of genius and faith. As for Germany, 
we cannot read a page of Klopstock's "Messiah" without 
yawning. During the whole of the unpoetic eighteenth 
century of English literature nothing of the kind arose 
above a level of absolute dreariness. Mr. Washington 
Moon, therefore, has undertaken a most daring enter- 
prise, and if we cannot congratulate him upon the 
achievement of great success, he must certainly be ac- 
quitted of anything approaching to failure. Some of his 
minor passages of episodical reflection or description are 
really very beautiful. 



1 92 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 

The Orb. 
The very announcement of an epic poem upon a sacred 
subject is enough to make one shudder when we call to 
mind the number of ambitious failures we have witnessed, 
and we must confess that we opened this book with any- 
thing but a tolerant disposition towards another of the 
tribe of incompetents, as we feared this author would 
prove. Let us hasten, then, as in duty bound, to say that 
we recognize the " Elijah " of Mr. Moon as really a sacred 
epic of the highest order, in sentiment pious, in style 
powerful but chastened ; the author has shown himself a 
master both of rhyme and rhythm. We are much mis- 
taken if this work will not live, and, moreover, if it will 
not prove an aid to the piety of many a Christian who 
reveres the Bible as the very treasury of all that is sacred 
and true, the armoury of faith, and the foundation of 
hope. We strongly recommend the work to the attention 
of our readers. 



Cambridge University Journal. 
The author truly had a very grand subject to deal with, 
so grand that but few men would venture to take it in 
hand, and still fewer would handle it with any degree of 
success. To write in poetry the history of the " grandest 
" and most romantic character Israel ever produced," is 
a task not easy of accomplishment. There are many 
scenes in that life which must almost baffle description — 
the flight into the wilderness, the whirlwind, — and 
earthquake, and fire, and the " still small voice " on Mount 
Horeb ; the sacrifice on Carmel and the consequent dis- 
comfiture of the priests of Baal : and then the grand 
scene of all — the parting between Elijah and Elisha, 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 193 

followed by the wondrous translation of the former. * 

The author of such lines as those we have just quoted 
must know something about real poetry — must have 
some of its spirit— and those who read his work care- 
fully may be profited and instructed, and at the same 
time will give Mr. Moon the praise he deserves from us all. 



Church and School Gazette. 

We are bound to say that Mr. Moon's poem is a great 
work, and has many passages of rare beauty and of well- 
sustained sublimity. 

That power of imagination and play of fancy which 
leavens the whole lump of real poetry, and by a subtle 
touch of art, simile, or metaphor, turns earthly dross 
into gems and gold to blaze and burn before our eyes, is 
not wanting in it. The wealth of Mr. Moon's imagination 
has everywhere enriched his poem. 

We can find space for only the following minor touches 
of his pencil. — 

"Words are b^t harrowing when hope is dead. 
True friendship breathes its sympathy in sighs ; 
And love's most loving ivords are spoken by the eyes." 

" The brightest jewel in the costliest shrines 
Where God is worshipped is humility. 
'Tis like a star which trembles as it shines; 
And through its trembling, brighter seems to be." 

The simile in the above quotation is full of beauty, and 
brightly reflects the radiance of true genius. 

There is a grandeur and sublimity that reminds one 
of Milton and of Young, even at their best, in the poet's 
description of the Day of Doom, in Canto i., and also at 
the close of the book, in the translation of Elijah. 



194 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 

The following beautiful passage is from Canto xii. — 

Peace, troubled heart ! ' Tis only doubt that sorrows ; 

Faith, trusting, says, e'en though through falling tears, — 

' ' Tis God who for a little season borrows 

' The gift his hand bestowed in bygone years/ 

O, Gracious God, each loss Thyself endears, 

For Thee we cannot lose. Thou art the same 

For ever : and dost gently chide our fears ; 

Telling the grief- crushed heart, overwhelmed with shame, 

That there is hope, for ' I AM ' is Thy glorious name. 

' I AM thy Father ; — doubt me not, my child. 

'I AM thy Friend;— O fly thou not from Me. 

' I AM thy God ; — be not by sin beguiled. 

' I AM thine All ;— I give Myself to thee. 

' I AM ' — the rest is blank, that it may be 

Filled up by man according to his need. — 

Trust thou in Him, Elisha ; happy he 

Who, though through griefs which cause his heart to bleed, 

Learns that the heart of God is merciful indeed." 

It is awarding no slight merit to the author to say that 
his whole poem breathes the purest morality and the 
loftiest devotion. Going through it is lite going through 
a cathedral, where, as the grand music rolls on the ear, 
the eye is almost everywhere enchanted with visions of 
unearthly interest and scriptural beauty breaking in rich- 
est colour from its storied windows, while the soul is 
touched and stirred with the deepest emotions of religion. 

We are much mistaken if the book does not become a 
favourite. 

Illustrated Weekly News. 
The magnificent epic poem before us is one of those 
rare issues, which, like wandering comets, appear only at 
long intervals. Every page teems with high poetic beau- 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS, 195 

ties, often soaring to the sublime. The author has 
approached his subject with studied care, and has mas- 
tered it in a style so grand, that little is left to be desired 
further than that the poet may attain the position which 
his brilliant epic entitles him to hold. Where all are so 
beautiful in thought and force, it is difficult to make an 
extract as fully showing Mr. Moon's powers. We, there- 
fore, take, almost at random, 

THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH. 

The sun had set, and as they journeyed on 

They thought they caught the sound of distant thunder ; 

Then nearer, clearer; hut o'erhead, stars shone, 

And on the horizon silv'ry clouds sailed under 

The deep blue sky. With mingled awe and wonder 

The prophets turned and saw that towards them came 

From heav'n a chariot and steeds of flame ! 

While Nebo's sacred mountain, with age hoary 

And crowned with snow, was radiant with the glow 

Of that celestial and unutterable glory. 

Ethereal, yet visible ; for bright 

Unto intensity through purest light 

Indwelling, was that chariot of the skies. 

The horses, too, were creatures not of earth ; 

Their necks were clothed with thunder ; and their eyes, 

Starry with beauty, told of Heav'nly birth. 

No harness fettered them ; no curb nor girth 

Restrained the freedom of those glorious ones, 

Nor traces yoked the chariot at their heels ; 

It followed them, as planets follow suns 

Through trackless space, in their empyreal courses ; 

For lo ! the fiery spirit of the horses 

Was as a mighty presence in the wheels, 

And in the dazzling whirlwind which behind them flew 

And caught Elijah up, as sunlight drinks the dew. 



196 EXTRA CIS FROM RE VIE WS. 

Away, away to Heav'n those steeds upbore him ; 

Leaving the clouds as dust beneath their feet. 

Wide open flashed the golden gates before him ; 

And angel forms of splendour rose to greet 

The favoured prophet. Oh, the rapture sweet ! 

The ecstacy most thrilling which came o'er him ! — 

But thoughts are voiceless when we soar thus high ; 

And, like the lark that vainly strives to beat 

With little wings the air and pierce the sky, 

We fall again to earth. Elisha there 

Wept o'er his loss, but wept not in despair. 

No ; though a few regretful tear-drops fell, 

He knew that with Elijah all was well ; 

For through the open gates of Heav'n there rang 

Strains of the song of welcome which the angels sang. 

O who can picture that transcendent sight ! 

Who fitly can relate the wondrous story ; 

Who paint the aerial beauty of that night, 

Or sing the fleetness of those steeds of glory 

And God's triumphant chariot of light 

Entering Heav'n ! Never, in depth or height, 

Had mortal gazed on such a scene before ; 

Never shall years, how long soe'er their flight, 

The solemn grandeur of that hour restore, 

Till Heav'n' s last thunder peals forth "It is done ! " 

And the archangel, dazzling as the sun, 

Descends to earth ; and, standing on the shore 

Of ages, swears with upraised hand by ONE 

Who lived ere time its cycles had begun, 

That time shall be no more. 



Advertiser. 

We assure the reader that these lines are but an 
average specimen of the glowing, vigorous, and lofty 
versification which characterize the epic of 'Elijah the 
i Froxjhet\ The poem is a noble effort to embody a noble 
theme. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 197 

The Impeuial Review. 

Elijah the Prophet is a fine subject for a great poem. 
The deep religious mystery that pervades the whole 
story, the moral grandeur of the prophet's character, its 
terrible power and its tender pathos, the superhuman 
and supernatural elements that interweave the whole 
texture of his mighty mission as an avenging prophet of 
" the living God," all form a dramatic basis of the 
broadest kind on which to build a poem of more than 
ordinary interest, and nothing is more worthy of praise 
than the manner in which our author has everywhere 
embodied in the substance of his poem the simple 
grandeur of the Bible narrative. The epic clings with 
loving fidelity to the divine record, and in sentiment 
breathes the very soul of humble piety and exalted faith. 
The whole tone and temper of the poem is not only 
:*eligious but devotional in the highest degree. 

Mr. Moon is equally successful in what may be fairly 
called the earthly element in his poem; he has here 
shown that penetrating insight into the workings of the 
human will and human passion, without which no poet 
can hope to reach the highest department of his art. 
The dramatic power severally shown in the evolution 
of the character of Ahab and of Jezebel, and of the 
sublime prophet who is the hero of the poem, are all 
distinct evidences of Mr. Moon's capacity in this province 
of his art. 

His powers of imagination are worthy of an epic 
poet. 

His descriptions of nature are drawn with remarkable 
finish and taste. The night scene in the Invocation is an 
admirable picture, we can only give a few lines of it, 



1 98 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 

which contain one of Mr. Moon's striking similes : — 

" The worlds of splendour in the midnight sky, 
Which, gem-like, shine so beautifully bright ; 
Are but thy breath, Almighty God most high, 
Condensed whilst passing through primeval night, 
With those creative words, ' Let there be light.' " 

The metre adopted is that of the Spenserian stanza, 
with some slight alteration. With the exception of Lord 
Byron, no imitator of Spenser has shown a freedom and 
vigour in the handling of this graceful, but difficult 
measure, which can be compared with the mastery almost 
universally evinced by Mr. Moon. We are bound to 
remark that, taken as a whole, it is by far the best poem 
on a sacred subject that has appeared for a considerable 
time. 

ALSO, 

In 1 vol., square 8vo., cloth, gilt, price 5s., 

MINOR POEMS, 

By G. WASHINGTON MOON, F.R.S.L., 

Author op 'Elijah the Prophet,' etc. 



HATCHARD & CO., 187, PICCADILLY, LONDON. 



NORWICH: PRINTED BY FLETCHER AND SON. 



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